


The Many Paths of Daniel Jackson

by evrymeeveryyou



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-20
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 22:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evrymeeveryyou/pseuds/evrymeeveryyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every possibility, every choice I had ever made, even choices I hadn't, led to an entirely different life until I could no longer tell reality from its alternates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why Would You Ever Want to Leave?

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: I do not own any Stargate characters, ideas or themes. They all belong to MGM. I'm just playing with them.
> 
> Spoilers: Every which way from Sunday. The entire Stargate franchise is open season.
> 
> Author's Note: Daniel's POV, cuz I love writing for him. This involves peeks into many alternate universes. So I'm not issuing a character death warning because many of them are in alternate universes. Anything else would be a spoiler. You get the picture.

Sitting in front of this camera, its lens staring back at me, was akin to looking down the barrel of a gun whose trigger I was about to pull. And that was what I was about to do, wasn't it? Relatively pull the trigger on the past two weeks. It was better than using a real gun. I could barely admit to myself that I had previously considered that option.

My throat was dry. I took a sip from the glass of water that had been placed in front of me. I took a deep breath and let it out. Finally, I spoke, even as all of the possible things I could say spun out of control within me. I could hear the insanity permeating my voice, my mannerisms, the order of my words. There was no way for me to control it.

"If you are listening to this now, you should know that you did this to yourself. It was all your idea. Well, other people thought about it and gave you options, but you chose it. All on your own. So believe them. It's true. Believe me, you wouldn't want what they're pulling out anyway. It's too much. Too much all at once. No air. No breaks. Just a million and one different this ways and thats curling around in my head until I couldn't breathe anymore.

"If you haven't figured it out by this point, I believe I am quite literally insane. There is nothing to hold onto anymore. Every possibility, every choice I had ever made, even choices I hadn't, led to an entirely different life until I could no longer tell reality from its alternates. Who am I really? I guess you tell me. You would know better.

"Not like you ever know better about anything. You push and you argue and you don't see what's of value in your life. But I do. How could I not? I've lost everything and regained it. I can't unsee what I have seen. But maybe you can. Just don't lose sight of what's important to you. You see subterfuge where there is none and undervalue the feelings of everyone around you. You shouldn't. Everything you were thinking was wrong. Besides, what can distance do except bring guilt when there is nothing you can do?"

Sam's carefully measured, kind but worried voice cut me off. "Ok, Daniel. That's enough. I think we've got what we need. Possibly a little more than we wanted. Do you want to lie down for a second? Dr. Lam can give you something to help you sleep."

God yes. Sleep would quiet down the riot in my head. "Please Sam," I begged, "please shut it off."

She did.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

2 Weeks Before

"You can't be serious?" Vala walked beside me, having to run a couple of steps to keep up with my brisk pace. We were walking from the Stargate on P3X-495 to the temple the city had been built around. It was about a two mile walk, so we had a little time, and I for all of the courage I'd had at breakfast this morning, was on a mission to outrun Vala so she wouldn't feel compelled to discuss my earlier statement any further.

"Daniel! Stop it!" Vala growled, stopping in her tracks, planting her feet, flipping each of her pigtails over her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest. It was clear she wasn't moving until I spoke to her.

"Jackson," Mitchell called from far ahead of us. "What's the hold up? You and the Princess need to pick up the pace."

I marched back to her, reached out and grabbed her by the elbow and began to pull her along beside me, a little roughly. "What Vala?"

"You tell us at breakfast that you're considering a semi-permanent leave of absence to work on the dig site on P9whatever, a task that could potentially take years and now you want to act like I don't have the right to ask questions?" She growled. "Do we even have a choice in the matter?"

I pretended to think about it. "Um…no, you don't get a choice because it isn't your life, it's mine and you can ask questions, but I would prefer that you didn't." I turned to look at her, my face becoming stern because I needed her to understand what I was about to say. "If I should choose to go, and that is still an if, it will be because I have decided to do so. Nobody is going to talk me out of this if that's what I decide."

Something clenched in my chest as I watched her go from angry to flat out distressed, her eyes widening and her gaze darkening. "But…why would you want to leave?"

The truth was, I was tired – tired of watching my best friends move on, tired of watching people die, tired of trying to stay alive, tired of having my head messed with, tired of having the fate of the galaxy resting pretty heavily on my shoulders, tired of pretending that this thing that was building between me and her didn't exist and wouldn't come to a heart-rattling conclusion for me. I needed my space from it all. I was tired. I was beginning to feel old. And frankly, I hadn't expected anybody to miss me much. I attempted to explain this to her in the best way I could without throwing my bone weary body down on the floor and going to sleep on the ground on the way to the temple.

I sighed heavily and slowed down so she no longer had to run to keep up with me. "Vala, when I originally worked on the Stargate program it was in order to prove my beliefs about aliens on Earth correct. When I first joined the SGC it was about finding my wife. Then it was about the Goa'uld, then it was about the Ori, and now that the universe is finally relatively at peace, I would really love the chance to settle down and just…just…be an archaeologist again."

"The Lucian Alliance still exists," Vala tried, but the sideways grin on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes told me she knew she was fighting a losing battle. "You could make it about them. Oh! Are there any good archaeological dig sites in Colorado? Then at least we could still have the occasional lunch together."

I couldn't help the smile that made its way across my face. She really was sweet sometimes. It was too bad that aspect of her tended to be so hard to find.

We walked for a moment in silence before I peered over at her. She was staring out into space and her eyebrows were knit tightly together. I could tell she was deep in thought. She really was taking this harder than I thought she would. I bumped her with my shoulder and she looked up at me. "Hmmm?"

"We can still have lunch, you know?" I said, unsure of why I even needed to attempt to comfort her. This wasn't such a big deal. She would probably just miss having someone to pick on since Teal'c mostly ignored her and Mitchell could shoot her down without much of a fight. "I would just be a 'gate ride away. It's not like I'd be dead."

Death, for me, was a joke. I'd done it enough times to merit that. Apparently, it was not a joke for her.

She poked me hard in the ribs with her P90. "Don't ever joke like that."

"Ow!" I complained staring at her wide eyed before continuing to walk on in silence.

As we advanced on the temple, I considered what we already knew about this planet. It had been clear from the immediate area around the 'Gate, that the people of this planet had been relatively advanced. Their city had been built around the 'Gate and the temple which told us that these two places were valued highly. All that we had seen walking in had been typical for a well developed society except for one thing – nobody was there. The MALP had shown no life signs and no toxins in the air and when we made our way to the planet, we discovered that there weren't even any dead bodies remaining.

The city looked like it had been a bustling metropolis yesterday. Houses still had food on the tables. Vehicles were abandoned in the streets. Therein lay the mystery.

I found myself thinking of the dead civilization we had encountered on our second year as SG-1 – the one that had been overrun by insects that bit you and made you worth your weight in more insects. I suppressed a shudder at the thought and tried to hide the fact that I was searching the skies for bugs.

The city was similar to the Tollan city in its structure. I think Jack had said it looked like the Jetsons lived there. Now I was looking for flying cars. I really needed to stop doing this for a living.

"Daniel, what are you looking for?" Vala asked, amusedly following my eyes to the sky. We were just catching up to Mitchell and Teal'c who now stood outside of the temple, waiting for us.

"Bugs in flying cars," I blurted. Teal'c looked slightly amused, but Mitchell and Vala just seemed confused. At their blank looks I pointedly replied. "I told you I need a vacation."

With a smirk I looked up at the towering temple before me. With a design based in triangular shapes, the look of the sharp ivory edges, bejeweled with what appeared to be control crystals, made the building both ominous and wondrous.

"Sam's gonna lose it," Mitchell smirked. "All those crystals going to waste."

"Colonel Carter will be most displeased," Teal'c nodded. "It is surprising to see a culture that would waste such a valuable object cosmetically."

"Maybe once we're sure this place is abandoned we could get a ladder and take them out!" Vala enthused.

I was horrified by the idea. "You'll ruin the structure!"

Vala reacted with the same horror, although markedly less real. "What will all of the invisible people do?"

I sneered at her. Mitchell chuckled. Teal'c still looked amused. For Teal'c, it was a subtle look, but those who knew him well enough could see it.

"Can we just go in?" I groused. "I'm curious what we'll find inside."

Mitchell visibly rolled his eyes. "Alright, buddy. On we go."

We entered the ill lit temple and immediately turned our flashlights on. The visibility greatly improved and we began to take in our surroundings. The inside of the temple was finely decorated with more chunks of crystals and there was writing on the walls.

"It says 'Welcome to all those that are left behind," I read, in awe of what I was seeing. "And it's in Alteran."

Vala waved her flashlight to her right and to her left, making a sweep of the surrounding area. "That's very nice. Does that wall tell us which way to go?"

I followed her movements. Two pathways, not a hint in sight. "No."

"Teal'c and I will head to the right, you two take the left. Holler if anything funky happens," Mitchell instructed.

"Will do," I confirmed before turning and heading off down the left-hand corridor, Vala following closely behind.

Our boots echoed heavily against the floor as we made our way down the hall in silence. Complete silence. Vala didn't even seem compelled to say a word. What was up with her? She had been behaving strangely ever since this morning.

The corridor led to a large meeting hall. The room was filled with chairs set up in several concentric circles, in the center of which was a stone altar. I stepped closer, shining my flashlight over the object, which was engraved with Alteran, surrounding a dim sky blue orb in its center.

I was intrigued. More than intrigued, I was excited. An Alteran device was quite a find. I squinted in the darkness, leaning in closer, attempting to make out the specific letters that were carved into the stone.

And then I was punched soundly in the arm. Hard. "I don't want you to go anywhere."

I whirled the flashlight around on her. "We're not doing this right now."

"Oh and the great Daniel Jackson has spoken," Vala grumbled. "I'm so glad to know we're not doing this."

"Good," I turned back towards the writing.

"You need to stay with SG-1," she spoke, once again breaking my concentration.

"Why Vala?" I sighed heavily. "You'll find someone else to mock and tease. Maybe the new linguist on the team will be a befuddled scientist you can delight in embarrassing."

For a moment, when her eyes lit up like fire on ice, I honestly believed she was going to punch me in the face just like she had on the Prometheus. And then, just like that, she seemed to cool down. "Ah yes, a new challenge, I always love that."

I was about to turn back to my work, but thought better of it. She would just interrupt me again if she hadn't gotten through everything she needed to say. "Anything else?"

She bumped me with her shoulder. "I don't want just any befuddled scientist. I want this befuddled scientist," she pouted.

Sure, until the next guy comes along. It's not like Vala had ever given me the impression that she was a one-man woman.

Thinking that didn't stop my heart from racing, though. She didn't mean it. She couldn't . She just liked to see me squirm. I mean, at the very most, she would just miss her friend. It was nothing more. Nothing.

And then her hand brushed my cheek and the bottom of my resolve dropped out. My breath hitched.

"I'm serious Daniel. I don't want you running off to some planet where I won't know if you're ok and I'll get to have lunches with you every now and then. I want you on the team." She ran her hand down my cheek. The electricity circling in the room spiked. "I want you where I can see you."

I was startled by her admission. I couldn't make any sense of it. Her voice had seemed so sincere…emotional. I had no answer…and quite honestly, no brain power at the moment. I tried to dig up whatever truth I could from the look in her eyes and came up with something I never expected to see.

"DanielJackson, we have found something very important," Teal'c's voice sounded from just outside the entrance of the room.

Quickly startled back to reality, I turned my flashlight towards Teal'c and Mitchell as they made their way in.

"Dammit," Vala whispered.

I turned away and focused on the artifact. "Um…so have we."

"Ours probably tops yours," Mitchell remarked and when my flashlight came up to his face I found he looked a little disturbed. God, had they seen what had just happened between Vala and I?

"I doubt that," Vala drawled, and when I turned my flashlight to her, I found she was staring at me with an odd look on her face that I couldn't immediately discern. I found myself wanting to examine it, to talk to her, but Teal'c dispelled that mood pretty quickly.

"We found bodies. 155 of them. They had hung themselves in an equally large hall on the other end of the temple." Teal'c answered grimly.

Vala gasped beside me. The thought of all those bodies…I was glad I had gone down this hall.

I did the math in my head. "That's not everybody. This city is much larger than 155 people. Where did everybody else go?" My thoughts rolled around in my head for a moment before the inscription by the temple entrance came to mind. "Welcome to all those left behind. This place was made for all those that hadn't disappeared."

I turned and looked at the artifact I had discovered, shining my flashlight over it.

"There is a lot here, but I can't really make out all of it without some references," I explained as I worked my way through whatever I could make sense of. "There is only one truth. The universe is infinite."

"If it says anything about treasure in a pot, I'm likely to spit blood," Vala spoke right over my shoulder, surprising me.

I chuckled at the reference to our first treasure hunting adventure, turning towards her just long enough to see the mischievous twinkle in her eyes as they met mine before looking back down at the altar. "Nope, nothing about treasure or pots, but the part about the universe and truth does come from an Alterran proverb, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find it here."

"Indeed," Teal'c nodded. "Are you able to decipher anything of relevance to the suicides, DanielJackson?"

I continued to read what I could in the dim lighting without my references to assist.

"'The only way one can be enlightened is by understanding, living and experiencing all of the universe'…this is an attempt at an ascension handbook!" I answered, wishing I could just teleport it back to my office and sit with it until I could fully understand all of the linguistic nuances and all of the fine print. "All I can really gather at the moment is that the orb in the center somehow affords the user with a greater understanding of ascension."

"Maybe the people in there were unable to make the doohickey work," Cam shrugged, motioning back to the corridor.

"Perhaps use of the device has unforeseen consequences," Teal'c added.

I heard Vala rustle around a little before she spoke up. "I'm checking the device Sam taught me how to use before she left. No unusual readings. I would not be surprised if the power source was depleted."

"Let me see that Princess?" Cam said, tugging the device out of Vala's hand in a way that seized up my insides.

These days it seemed I was the only one allowed to do that.

"Yup, looks about right. You want to take this sucker home with you?"

"If we could, yes," I nodded enthusiastically. I was more than a little aware that I looked like a child being told he could have a puppy. I didn't care. "I could do some extensive investigation of the manual and Dr. Lee could run some tests and –"

White hot, struck-by-lightning pain made it's way up my arm and through my body in a spectacularly convulsive pattern until I was unconscious on the floor.

I had leaned my hand on the device. Why had I done that? Why would I ever do that?

When I came to, it was to the feeling of fingers combing comfortingly through my hair. Her fingers. My eyes opened slowly but everything was blurry. Where were my glasses?

"DanielJackson?" Teal'c questioned, his voice concerned. For a moment when I looked up at him, I didn't see the gold emblem that had been branded into his forehead. For a moment, he just looked like a regular human man. The image faded quickly.

"Hey big fella, are you okay?" Jack asked me, waving his hand in front of my face. "How many fingers?" Wait. That wasn't Jack. That was Cameron.

I looked to Vala, confused as to why I couldn't seem to see anything quite right. "Are you alright, darling?" She asked. Her voice was low and metallic. Goa'uld.

"What?" I asked urgently surging up to sit straight before careening back against Vala when my vision went for a dizzying spin.

"Ok he is not alright," Vala, sounding once again like her normal self, told Mitchell urgently. She put a hand under my chin and lifted my face so that my eyes met hers. My vision continued to swim and I felt vomit was imminent.

"We have to get him to the gate to Dr. Lam," she cried as her hands urgently moved against my cheeks as if trying to snap me out of whatever haze I was in. "Do you think you can walk if I help you, darling?"

"Uhmmm," I answered intelligently.

"Good," Mitchell nodded. "You help him, Teal'c and I will grab this thing so we can figure out what it did to Jackson."

"I would suggest you do not touch the orb," Teal'c commented to Mitchell as he helped me to my feet. "I believe that was DanielJackson's error."

Vala was on me in seconds, her body under my arm, supporting my weight. It was only then that I realized my glasses had never fallen from my face. I looked to her and she was suddenly crystal clear.

When she spoke it was with a wry smile, her voice dripping in sarcasm. "I still don't understand. Why would you ever want to leave?"


	2. Adverse Effects

When I finally collapsed onto my bed, it was 4:30 in the morning and I was beat. Done. And not wanting to wake up for a very long time.

My day had started with an internal pep talk and a breakfast revelation…and ended in an 8 hour long stay in the infirmary, an eventual clean bill of health, permission from Dr. Lam to sleep in my quarters on the base, and a demand that I contact her if I experience any adverse effects from the device whatsoever.

Mitchell had sent everybody and himself away from the infirmary about 4 hours ago to get some "shuteye." Vala hadn't moved a muscle – just sat there with me silently and yelled at Dr. Lam that she better be sure I was alright. I kept telling her that I was fine and that she could go to her quarters and get some rest so she could help me with my translation once I was back on my feet. A decisive "no" was the most I had gotten out of her aside from a demand that I be sure to call her if I needed anything once I had headed back to my quarters.

She was probably just sliding into bed herself. Vala. Bed. Not going to think about it.

Instead I turned my attention to the device and lasted about 5 minutes of contemplating the translation before my brain checked out and I was sound asleep.

"No," Sha're's voice, speaking in Abydonian as we usually did, echoed in my head as she peered over my shoulder, taking in the writing on the tissue box that had been sent through the wormhole for me. "Thanks, please send more." A message to Colonel Jack O'Neill, telling him that he had my permission to come through and join us in Abydos.

"Sha're!" I jumped. When had she gotten here? I turned to face her. "What brings you here…I thought –"

"You thought I would not see that you were about to send a message through the ring to Earth?" She said with a sigh and her voice sounded weary.

"No," I said, turning towards her and taking her face lovingly in my hands, pushing a wild black curl away from her eyes. "No, of course I would have told you first. I was simply considering it. I just thought that you were still visiting with Na'ee. If I had realized you were back…"

"You would have still been here…by the ring or with the writing of the gods," Sha're commented. "And I would have come to find you. You would have 'lost track of time'."

It was quickly becoming clear to me that Sha're was upset with me. Sha're rarely seemed upset with me, so this concerned me greatly.

"My wife, you understand that I do not mean to do these things." It hurt me that she may believe I was purposely ignoring her. "It's just that what I have found in this pyramid is so interesting to me. I have never seen anything like it. And once I found it, I needed to understand what it meant. Nobody from Earth has ever seen anything like this. It was a great find and that's what I have spent all of my life doing. Understanding things that aren't meant to be understood. It's what led me to you."

She smiled, but it was a weak smile. "You're words are kind, dear husband, but they are untrue." She shook her head as she spoke. "Yes, I know that you are drawn to your find, but that does not change the need to explore that led you to it. You find your life here to be lacking something." Tears filled her eyes and her voice broke here and my heart along with it. "I have tried to be a good wife for you my Daniel, but I fear that I have failed. You do not wish to remain here. You want something more than I can give you."

I pulled her to me, desperate to comfort her, to keep her from believing what she seemed so ready to believe. I buried my face into her hair, whispering directly into her ear. "No Sha're, you have been more than a good wife. You are my life. I love you dearly. I am simply curious by nature. I wish to know more about our home, just as I wished to know more of my former home when I was there. Please understand, I can make my life's work making sense out of the symbols on those walls."

"And when you are finished," Sha're pulled back from me, her dark eyes pleading and tearful, "who will you share that information with? Will you leave here?" She walked away from me, wandering behind my back as I faced the wall that had, just seconds ago, been blocked by her. "Return to O'Neill and tell him what you have learned? Or will you spend your life trying to understand this and then share your finds with no one?"

I didn't know how to answer that question. Frankly, she was right. I would want to contact Earth. I would want to tell them what I had learned. And I couldn't be sure if that was why I had searched this place out to begin with. I loved her enough to stay here but that didn't mean that I didn't want to jump at this opportunity to speak with anybody who understood things as I did, who understood my culture, my offbeat comments, my references without needing to explain them and losing everything in translation.

I turned to face my beautiful wife. And I lied. At least a little.

"I would be fine never seeing anyone from there again, if it meant spending my life here with you. I love you. I want everything with you. A family, a life. How can I prove that to you?"

"Bury the ring again, dear husband," she requested, her voice barely above a whisper as though she feared my response. "Bury it and leave us to our life together. Keep us all safe and never unbury it again."

"Ok," I yielded. "I will bury it. Right away."

Hours of work later, the gate was buried under a mound of rock and gravel and any hope I had ever had of leaving this place was gone. My heart was also buried under a weight of a different kind.

It wasn't that I didn't love Sha're or Abydos. It wasn't that I ever wanted to leave forever, but for a little while, to find something, anything to investigate, I couldn't help but desire such a thing. Digging for secrets of the past was such a crucial part of who I was. I left the pyramid, putting out the torch I had lit there before I went.

It would be the last time I ever went there. I spent the rest of my life with two gorgeous children (who looked like their mother), a loving wife and the ghost of everything I had left behind vivid in my mind.

My eyes shot open and I looked around in confusion, taking in my quarters at the SGC.

This was real. That was not.

I found I needed to make that distinction very forcefully in my mind so I wouldn't get too mixed up. It very much felt like I had just spent my life on Abydos, never returning to Earth again.

It wasn't a strange dream for me to have experienced. After all, Sha're and I'd had that very discussion prior to my sending the tissue box through the 'Gate to Jack. The only difference was, I had somehow managed to convince her that I wasn't going anywhere and she had allowed it without much of a fight. That had been why she had felt the need to kiss me the way she had before I left to bring Jack, Sam and Kawalsky to the pyramid. It was an innocent pleading that I not leave her…as if I ever could. No amount of my curiosity would have willingly made me leave Sha're behind.

Fate had never allowed me to prove that to her.

The strange thing was how real this was. It felt like I had spent a lifetime in that dream.

I attempted to shake it out of my head and lay back down to go to sleep. It took me a lot longer this time, with thoughts of Sha're, Skaara, Kasuf and all of the other family I had left behind in Abydos weighing heavily on my mind. Still, eventually I had managed to fall asleep again.

Pain. And dammit, I was dying. I knew I was. Just waiting to die now. Lying on the floor on the very edge of a platform, bleeding from a staff weapon wound in my abdomen. Hearing Mitchell scream for Sam.

I could tell she had just died against the console. Could hear the sick thud of her body hitting it. That, or she was dying like me. Unable to move, barely able to breath, awaiting the inevitable.

God, how had we ended up in this mess? That bastard Ba'al – coming back in time, shifting everything around us. Making Teal'c his first prime, and Vala his queen. Bile rose in my throat at the thought.

He had killed Jack and changed our entire timeline and now all that we had left rested upon Mitchell getting through the 'Gate and changing everything. I could almost smile a little when I heard the sound of his body crossing the event horizon. He made it. This wasn't all for nothing. Mitchell would go back and fix the timeline and as long as he had succeeded, I would have never died like this. This would not be real.

It sure felt real.

A slight roll of the eyes and I could see as Teal'c was shot. And then all opposition ended and I could hear the metal clang of the ring transport being activated.

Though I knew whom I was about to see, I prayed to anyone that would listen that I would die before I got the chance. Apparently, nobody was taking my calls.

My Vala was gone.

The thing that had purchase over her body had dressed it in a black and gold ornately decorated dress and black boots and had curled her hair and for a moment, I found myself waiting for her to worry over me and tell me that she had been faking the whole time, just like she had been on P8X-412 when she had pretended to be Quetesh to attempt to convince the people there not to follow the Ori. This plan would have been just as foolish as that one, but perhaps she had pretended in order to kill Ba'al.

I was pretty sure my dying was making me delirious. There was no way. Quetesh had her and there was no way I was ever going to see Vala again. Not in this lifetime.

I wished the last thing I had said to her wasn't bickering over whether or not Ba'al could escape his extraction. I wished it had been something of meaning. Of value.

Her grey eyes glowed gold and she grasped my face roughly in her hands. Her voice sounded, low and metallic. "You would lead in an insurrection against your god? Why would you do such a foolish thing?"

I didn't answer. Didn't know if I could. Didn't intend to try. It was all too much. Mitchell could die if he took on Ba'al alone on the ship. Teal'c was as good as dead. He had been wounded and Quetesh or her Jaffa would certainly kill him for being a shol'va. Jack was dead. Sam was dead. I was very nearly dead.

And though I never would have admitted it to her or anybody else, I was watching a woman I had loved being moved around like a marionette by something evil that was living inside of her.

And I was doing it for the third time. There should be a cap placed on how many times a man should be allowed to have the same horrific experience.

For an entire year I had tried to make myself believe that somehow the change in timelines had caused Vala to avoid becoming a Goa'uld. It was the only way I had been able to cope with the idea that she had disappeared from right under my nose and I had been unable to stop it. Again.

She gripped my face in her hands, harder this time, possibly breaking bones in the process.

"Where did your friend escape to?" She asked. "Tell me now and I will place you into the sarcophagus and allow you to heal. Then you could be my Lotar and serve me the way you should."

Something sick in me, whether it be the sheer desire to live or the chance to have another opportunity to free Vala from this vile creature made me consider it for just a second before hocking up anything and everything I could muster up in my mouth at her face.

My last act of defiance.

Even as her hand crushed my windpipe and I gasped for a breath I couldn't even take, a solitary tear rolled from my eye to the ground beneath me as I mouthed her name one last time without a single sound.

"Vala."

I threw myself to a seating position in my bed, my hands coming to my throat, almost unable to take in enough air, as if it had all just happened, as if somebody had just crushed my windpipe and killed me.

This was not a memory with a couple of variations like the dream before had been. Or even a wish or guilt. This was…insane. A whole other life stemming from the extraction. I could remember where I went for coffee for the entire year that I had been pretending not to be Daniel Jackson.

My leg! I threw the covers off of me and rolled up my sweatpants on both sides. Both legs were present and accounted for. I heaved a sigh of relief before processing what this could mean. For a moment, I had been truly unsure of whether or not I had both of my legs. And honestly, right now I wasn't quite sure if I was really on Abydos, really in my bed or really dying in front of a time machine.

I mean, I had a pretty good idea which was real, but everything else had felt just as real as I had experienced it.

I jumped out of bed, pulled my sneakers onto my feet and ran out into the hallway before I really knew what I was doing. In sweatpants and a t-shirt, I rushed out at top speed, not even stopping as I checked my watch, which led to an interesting collision between myself and the wall. It was 14:00 hours.

I kept running until I had burst into Dr Lee's office where he, Dr. Lam, Mitchell, Teal'c and Vala stood around the artifact that had done this to me, whatever was happening to me. Even as they all turned to look at me, I bent forward, my hands leaning on my knees as I gasped for breath, tuning out the concerned looks of all of them.

But when I straightened up, only one pair of eyes caught mine. Worried grey eyes that lacked their normal twinkle, and thankfully any golden glow to speak of. She was still my Vala. This was still my team. Teal'c was alive. Mitchell wasn't in 1929. They were fine.

My eyes couldn't leave hers and I examined her face, taking it in, noting all the differences that existed been her and Quetesh. She offered me an awkward little smile and a nervous look that told me I was making her quite uncomfortable with all my staring.

"Daniel?" She laughed nervously. "Are you alright?"

"Are you?" I asked, my mouth moving completely against my will.

She stepped towards me, her eyes narrowing. "Of course I am, silly. Why would you ask?"

I didn't answer. Regaining my breath, I straightened turning to Dr. Lam who was studying me like I was the potential cure for cancer.

"Dr. Lam," I addressed her, motioning with my hands, trying to keep myself talking, because I wasn't really feeling so great at the moment. "Adverse effects, I think I've got 'em."

My vision blurred. Then righted. And I took in the face of Dr. Janet Frasier. Very much alive.

"Janet?" I said in disbelief. Then the world spun out and everything went black.


	3. Space

Sam and Teal'c were preparing. Mitchell was practically bouncing on his heels, waiting anxiously for the plan to take effect. Vala was helping with one thing or another, with a helpful happy smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. After this much time together, everybody knew that smile was full of shit.

That was Vala though, still going through bursts of time where she didn't want anybody to know she was hurting.

I always knew.

Fifty damn years – how could I not know?

I was observing. Watching what we now had. Watching what we were about to lose. Wondering if I would ever know what I lost here. Being pensive. Vala would say it was my "thing".

When I had boarded the Odyssey all that time ago, she was an annoyance – an annoyance I was fond of, but an annoyance nonetheless.

We would lose the relationship we had built. We would lose all of the new things I now knew about my friends. Teal'c would be older and what I had learned from the Asgard knowledge base would be gone.

But we would have our youth back. Vala and I would have the chance to develop a relationship in a place where I could take her out in the sun. A place where I could buy her shiny baubles and marry her properly. And we could raise children in a house with a yard…

The reminder of the child we had lost raised a deep ache from within and a lump began to form in my throat. I was afraid. Afraid we would never find our way to each other. Afraid we would never have the chance to try for a family again. Here it had been unwise – we could have never raised a normal child in this place where everything was artificial. But what if we never got the chance? What if I never allowed her to get close? What if I never saw how much she loved me?

Or the whole thing could go wrong. Then we would just die.

In all of her hustle and bustle, she brushed by me and I was reminded of how it felt when she would brush by me before this ship. I was reminded of how nervous I would get.

My hand shot out and grabbed her by the elbow. "We need to go talk."

My eyes met hers and she was just as beautiful as she was the day I met her.

"I'm fine old man," she giggled, tugging her arm free and shoving me a little.

I frowned. She was still full of it. I decided to try a different tack. "Who the hell said anything about you?" I glared at her, hands on my hips.

She stopped, her mouth twisting into a thoughtful little moue as she assessed how serious I was. "But, I have to –"

"No you don't," I said lowly and then raising my voice for the others to hear, I shouted to the rest of the team. "You guys will be fine without Vala's help, won't you?"

Mitchell and Teal'c stopped what they were doing but didn't bother to look up from their work. Sam's crystal blue eyes met mine and she smiled slightly, nodding to let me know she knew exactly what was going on here.

"Go, ya' dang love birds," Mitchell grumbled, good-naturedly. "She was just getting in the way anyway."

"And so were you," Sam winked. "I could practically feel you thinking."

"Indeed," Teal'c looked to us with a raised eyebrow.

I smiled triumphantly at Vala, shrugging my shoulders all the way up to my cheeks. "All these years and I still win!" Some things about us had never changed.

And some things had. When she purposely pulled me along by my bad arm, the one that had suffered the most from the arthritis that had periled my joints for years now, I thought about how lucky she was that I loved her. Damn woman.

She pulled me all the way to one of the ship's empty rooms and walked away from me, standing by the window and glancing out at the unforgiving coldness of space outside, leaving me in the middle of the room with her back turned to me.

"Why must you insist on talking about everything?" Her voice was hoarse and her shoulders shook and I knew she was crying. I could see it this time. I may have been clueless the first time she had cried like this in front of me, but this time, I knew.

My eyes began to cloud up with tears of my own. I blinked them back. Somebody needed to be strong here and I didn't want her to have to be the one. "We don't have much time. They'll be ready soon. Are we going to end this back where we started it? Without saying what is on our minds, shielding ourselves from each other until it's just about too late? We are either about to die or forget this ever happened and you want to just let it go by?"

"Of course not!" Vala shouted and she turned to face me with anger on her face like I hadn't seen in a very long time. "What is there to say? I don't even know where to begin! It's all out of our hands anyway, isn't it?"

I could feel my gaze soften and I took a deep breath, sighing heavily. "Come here," I motioned to her, gently.

She stared at me.

"Please, come here."

The relief I felt when she started to walk towards me was overwhelming.

I waited until she was just an arms length away before I spoke again, reaching out to take her hands in mine. "I want you to know, even if you are gonna forget, that I wasn't with you all these years because we were trapped on this god-awful ship. I was with you because—"

"I know. And I want you to know that I—"

"I know. I know."

"Guys," Sam shouted down the hall. "I don't mean to interrupt, but we're almost ready to go."

"Ok," I shouted back, never letting go of Vala's hands, never looking away from the very little I could see of her face here in the dark room, where only the twinkle of the stars served to illuminate anything. "Go ahead."

"You don't want to be there when…" Sam trailed off.

"No," I shook my head. "I need to be here."

Then Sam was gone and we were alone again.

I knew Vala was crying again. I knew because I was starting to. This was more difficult than I had conceived it to be. On the one hand, we could have had so much more, but on the other hand, we were letting go of everything we had been allowed to have on the sheer hope that we would find a way to grasp it again, in a better situation. The others didn't have nearly as much to lose by doing this as we did.

And then suddenly, like old times, she had tackled me in a hug so strong, nobody would believe her age. "I love you," she whispered in my ear, grasping on to me tightly.

I pulled her just as tightly to me. "I love you too. Don't worry, we'll find our way back to each other. I promise." A little of that good ole' Daniel Jackson faux optimism I had always pretended to hold on to, even in the worst of circumstances in order to keep everybody else positive. It never mattered how negative I was feeling at the time.

"I'm sure we will. I know we will. That's not all though…if the ship explodes…I don't want to burn again," she whispered and something inside of me broke.

"Val…" I let the tears come. There was nothing I could say to that. I simply held onto her and said a silent prayer that time would be reversed long before that ever happened. My face buried in her hair, I allowed my eyes to drift shut…

…and when they opened I was lying in an infirmary bed, looking at the face of a much younger Vala. She was perched on a chair beside me, her elbow planted on my bed, one hand holding her face up and the other clenched tightly in mine.

"Darling, you're awake!" She cried.

My finger went straight to my lips in a shushing motion. I needed to think. If we had reversed time, it had left me with my memories and rewound to a different time in my life than I had expected. But wait…I was forgetting something.

"Daniel, I'm going to get Dr. Lam," she jumped to her feet. I pulled her right back into her seat, my hand never leaving hers.

"Wait." My eyes darted around the room anxiously, struggling to get my bearings. But nothing was coming in quite clearly enough.

"You might need these," Vala smiled, reaching over and placing the arms of my glasses over my ears and pushing them up the bridge of my nose gently. "There. Does that help?"

My vision cleared up immediately. And I found myself staring vacantly into Vala's eyes. They may have been rimmed in red and plagued by dark circles, but I had a feeling that was because she was worried about me and that only made me want to stare into them longer.

"Daniel?" Her voice was anxious. "Darling, as much as I love the attention, you're making me nervous."

I took a deep breath and looked away, shaking my head free of the cobwebs that had formed within it. I turned back to Vala, with an overwhelming mix of feelings in my heart. "Val, how did I end up in here?"

She eyed me, and for a moment she looked just as confused as I felt. "You ran in to Bill's office all crazed and you thought Dr. Lam was someone named Janet, someone whom Muscles informed me is dead, and you passed out. And since when in the hell do you call me 'Val'?"

I blinked. Took a minute to process everything. I tried to focus on one reality. But all at once, I was the old man from the Odyssey, the doting husband of Sha're on Abydos and the man being killed by Vala. And this man. This man who was gripping Vala's hand and knew deep down that all of the other versions of life were impossible. But they just seemed so damn real.

And wait…old man on the Odyssey…well that was real, wasn't it? I had been. But only Teal'c remembered.

"Vala, I need you to go get Teal'c for me," I whispered, looking around. "And I need you to help me out of here. I need to see that artifact. And Dr. Lam will never let me go." But what I needed more than anything was for her to leave the room. I needed to clear my thoughts before they got any more confusing. After remembering a fifty year love affair with the woman, a fifty year love affair I was pretty sure had not actually happened to her, I needed to get a little space to sort through all of the images in my brain. Some of them were still pretty damn vivid…

Instead of leaving, Vala grinned in response, leaning over and producing a laptop with the hand that was not still tightly grasped in mine. "You don't have to leave to do that. I took pictures of every damn inch of that infernal rock and scanned them into the computer for you to have a look at. I knew you'd want to."

I couldn't help but react to her enthusiasm. It was just so good to see her so full of energy, of life. All the years on the Odyssey had drained much of that from her. "I love…" I caught myself. I mean really, what the hell? I had to get control over which Vala and Daniel was the real Vala and Daniel before I said something very stupid and my life spiraled out of control. "I love that you did that for me. It really shows how well you know me." I went for friendship, even though I had no idea whether friend Vala, co-worker Vala or 'Why the hell does my heart seize up every time you smile at me?' Vala was winning in my brain right now.

She smiled a dazzling smile in response. "I'll get Muscles."

She turned away and I let her hand slip from mine slowly, her fingers dropping from mine one by one.

She picked up the phone, called Teal'c and told him to come to the infirmary. And I wanted to scream for her to give me some space and to leave me alone so I could sort things out, but it wasn't her fault I was so confused and it suddenly felt like so long since I had snapped at her the way I wanted to right now.

"Oh. I thought you would go get him," I said, unable to hide the fact that I was gritting my teeth.

Vala turned and looked at me and she looked disappointed. "You…want me to leave?"

"Yes, I just need a minute to think."

"I shouldn't have stayed." She gathered whatever glossy magazines she was reading now and made to rush away.

My response was what felt like long worn instinct – the instincts of an old man that I wasn't. I reached out and re-took her hand in mine. She looked so hurt by what I had said and I just couldn't bare it. Not after everything I remembered us going through together.

"Val, I'm sorry. I don't want you to think I don't appreciate you staying here with me. I really do," I told her sincerely. "I just…I can't explain it until I've looked at my notes and spoken with Teal'c, but I've just endured something pretty confusing, and I need a minute. I just need a minute."

She took a deep breath and jutted her chin out in that statement of defiance she tended to take on whenever I was telling her something she didn't want to hear. "Well, I don't think I should leave you alone."

"Just let me talk to Teal'c and then you can worry over me all you want," I teased. "I may even welcome it."

This made her smile, her face lighting up with that ear-to-ear grin that told me I was in so much trouble. I couldn't help but return it. She was more beautiful than I had ever allowed myself to see. Because however much I wanted to separate this world from what I had seen in that last…dream, for lack of a better word, she was still the same woman who took care of me after she had bumped into me while on her rollerskates, knocking me over and causing me to break my arm because I had been too engrossed in whatever book I was reading to see her coming.

She turned to leave and the moment she had, I had the laptop on my lap and was looking through my notes with motivation. I had to keep all of the conflicting thoughts out of my head and focus on the issue at hand. And there was only one way my brain had ever developed to do that effectively…work. Thankfully, that was also one of two things necessary for me to understand my current predicament.

It jumped out at me almost immediately. I had mistranslated a plural noun as a singular one. The text said "The only way one can be enlightened is by understanding, living and experiencing all of the universes," or the "multiple universes" but not simply "the universe". It would have been a simple mistake, really. A simple mistake that changed the text in a way that made a whole world of difference.

"Dr. Jackson," Dr. Lam interrupted, "nobody told me that you were awake. I would have noticed, but SG-9 just came back from an altercation with the Lucian Alliance. It was not good."

I winced, putting away my computer. "Everybody okay?"

"Everybody but Colonel Winchell," she sighed. "He's critical. He was very close to an explosive they set off…got injured in the fallout. But we're working on it."

Damn. Colonel Winchell was a good man. I didn't know him that well, but I knew of him.

"What do you think?" I asked as she began to run through the regular examinations.

"What I think isn't really relevant. I hope we'll be able to pull him through it," she told me. I could see her immediately get uncomfortable with the level of emotion she was allowing me to see.

I could sympathize. Nobody on this base really wanted the others to see the kind of stress this job could put on us. There were only really five people who got what this job could do to me sometimes. And only one or two of those got to see that any more than sporadically.

"Let's talk about you now," Dr. Lam said with a sigh and a slight smile. "You seem to be in perfect health although you didn't seem to be sleeping quite enough before you collapsed in Dr. Lee's office. Since then you have been in a sleep state for nearly 48 hours straight."

"48 hours!" I acted surprised. In truth it had felt like 50 years. As a matter of fact, if I hadn't been focusing my memories on the way things had been before, I wasn't sure I would have been able to understand where the hell I was now.

Dr. Lam smirked a little. "Ms. Mal Doran never left your side. I don't think she wanted to now either." She scribbled a few notes on her chart before looking back up at me. "Back at Dr. Lee's, you referred to me as Janet. I assume you were talking about Dr. Frasier. Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

"Yes, but I really need to speak with Teal'c first, if that's alright," I explained. I was starting to get impatient and I was pretty sure the feeling had made its way into my voice. I wasn't all that good at hiding impatience.

Dr. Lam crossed her arms over her chest and eyed me skeptically. "Why?"

I heaved a deep sigh and stared at the scratchy infirmary bed linens. "That's personal."

"Dr. Jackson," Dr. Lam shook her head, "I'm a doctor. Which means I've pretty much seen it all. There is nothing that will shock me."

My face must have twisted in about a million different directions, my mouth flopping open and closing like a fish as I struggled for an answer to that statement. "I don't even want to know what you're thinking. I need to talk to Teal'c for a mentally personal reason." My nose screwed all the way up as the possibilities of what she could have been insinuating cycled through my mind. "Not physically personal."

She cracked a smile and I realized she was joking…this was a rarity for Dr. Lam. She had certainly had me going.

"That's just wrong," I narrowed my eyes at her just as Teal'c made his way into the infirmary, rushing to my side.

"DanielJackson! ValaMalDoran expressed the importance of your speaking with me. She implied it had something to do with what may be causing you to fall ill."

I grinned widely. "Yes! Yes! I need to speak with you. Dr. Lam?"

She was about to answer. About to leave. And I was about to get the answers I was waiting for. But…no such luck. Never could I have that much luck.

"Dr. Jackson!" General Landry's voice boomed through the infirmary. "Glad to hear you're with us once again. How are you feeling?"

My head dropped to my chest. This was beginning to get infuriating.

"I'm fine Hank," I spoke through gritted teeth. "Just fine. Now can I please have a moment to speak with Teal'c alone, so I can start piecing together what the hell is going on?"

"Hank?" General Landry's considerable eyebrows rose high over his head.

I looked first to Dr. Lam, then to Teal'c. Teal'c was doing that eyebrow-raising thing he loved so much.

"General Landry…sir…" I muttered, not truly feeling the need to apologize. After all, I had called the man Hank for many, many years.

It hit me quite strongly that I was, at this moment, the old man from the Odyssey, pretending to be fifty years younger. But that simply wasn't true. The distance I felt from my real self was getting more and more unnerving.

Landry was giving me a markedly concerned look. I had begun nervously drumming on the edge of my mattress with my fingers.

"Please. Just a minute," I added. The concern on everyone's face grew. I wanted to explain, but I couldn't. Because if I was simply having strange hallucinations, that was one thing. But actually experiencing what had happened on the Odyssey…that was an entirely different can of worms.

"You can have more than a minute," Landry finally replied. "You can have an hour. And then I would like your team to come to the briefing room to discuss your condition. I'll let Dr. Lam decide if you will be joining them. Dr. Lam?"

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Dr. Jackson," she nodded, moving out of the room behind her father.

I took a deep breath, allowing my eyes to drift closed just long enough to realize that every time I seemed to do that I woke up experiencing something different. They shot open again.

"What is it that you require of me?" I could tell by Teal'c's tone that he was more than a little curious about why I needed to talk to him so badly.

I took another deep breath before dropping the bombshell on him. "I need you to tell me what happened on the Odyssey."

Teal'c stared at me incredulously. "You know I can not do that, DanielJackson."

"You have to."

"No."

"Even if my life depended on it, Teal'c?" I hoped I could convey the urgency of the situation in my voice.

"Does your life, in fact, depend on knowing what happened on the Odyssey during fifty years you never actually lived?" He had that eyebrow raised. He wasn't buying it.

"Alright, alright, alright!" I shouted impatiently. "Why don't I tell you what happened on the Odyssey?"

"You were not there," he answered stoically, but I could tell I was getting to him. His eyes reflected his genuine concern.

"Of course not," I answered. "If I was not there I wouldn't know that Mitchell went crazy up there. Repeating everything over and over every day. Tearing up his room. I wouldn't know that you and Sam got…closer. I wouldn't know that Hank died. And I certainly wouldn't know that Vala and I had a relationship. A real relationship. Complete with a miscarriage, because when am I ever really happy for any kind of extended period of time? But we loved each other….until the day that damn ship exploded. We actually loved each other. Is that about right?"

Teal'c's shocked expression wasn't really like him. He was blown away…and it showed. "Indeed," he said in a low voice, his eyes darting around as if trying to understand.

"What?" Mitchell's voice boomed from the doorway.

My head whipped over in his direction. And there in the doorway were my four other closest friends, lined up in a row.

"You and Carter got 'closer'?" Jack directed at Teal'c, air quoting my term obnoxiously.

Sam only seemed to look confused. "You can't possibly know any of that."

"Surprise!" Vala squeaked, her eyes like saucers. "I brought your friends."

It seemed she wasn't taking this well. The idea that she was disturbed by the idea of our relationship made my stomach churn.

"I…uh…I…th-think I may understand why you wanted your space from me," she stammered. "How very unnerving for you….huh? Well, I'll leave you to the others now."

With that she raced out of the room at full tilt speed as fast as her long shapely legs would carry her.

I made to follow her. Got tangled in the wires that had me hooked to a million beeping noisemaking machines. Got hit by a wave of dizziness and flopped back down on the bed even as everyone remaining in the room rushed to my side.

"Damn it!" I punched the mattress as I watched her turn the corner and speed all the way out of my sight before she'd ever had the chance to hear that I wasn't unnerved by it at all.

I was relieved.


	4. Fine

This was uncomfortable.

I looked across the heavy, polished wood table of the briefing room at General Landry, who was sitting at the opposite head of the table. Beside him to his left was Dr. Lam, followed by Mitchell and Teal'c, who were closest to me. On the other side of me was Jack, Sam and as far away from me as possible, Vala. Her feet were planted firmly on the edge of the chair, her legs pulled up to her chest, held tightly there by her arms.

I was trying desperately to forget that last vision I had had in the hours between my encounter with Vala in reality and my time in the briefing room. In that vision I had never met Vala on the Prometheus and had instead spent my time in Atlantis. However, I later discovered that Col. Reynolds had struck up some sort of relationship with Vala. Apparently, she had learned more about the Tau'ri and through a series of complex deals and unwarranted trust on Reynolds' part, managed to swindle them out of a large sum of loot and bring the Lucian Alliance crashing down on Earth. With no Ori to hunt, Earth focused on the Alliance as it's primary enemy. Vala's actions had managed to destroy the SGC and effectively cut off all communications with Earth. She had assisted Natan and Anateo in tearing apart the Tau'ri structure from the inside out. When I had returned home on the Daedalus it was to a rotten shell of a planet caused by an all-out war between the Lucian Alliance, the Trust, and the SGC. And Vala had brought the whole thing down on our heads.

I knew that my Vala would never do something so sinister. That things here had to be different. But it was so hard to see that clearly with Earth's rubble so fresh in my mind.

In the vision I hadn't known more about her than a name. Here, I knew so much more. Still, the newfound complete trust that the Odyssey vision had brought had been tempered quite a bit by this new view. Either way, I had made a secret vow to never discuss that one with anybody. It wouldn't do anyone any good.

It was then that I realized that every single person sitting around the table was staring expectantly at me.

"OK…um…it seems that I'm starting to see things…" I started uncomfortably.

"Meaning you're wonko?" Vala jumped in.

I rolled my eyes dramatically. "No. Whenever I go to sleep, I've been seeing…living…gah! I don't how to explain this!"

"You know how to explain all of the many ridiculous things you have explained in the 12 years I've known you, but this is lost on you?" Jack asked.

I took a deep breath. He had a point. I could explain my way around anything. Well, almost anything. But whatever I couldn't, Sam certainly could.

"I fall asleep and I have dreams about what I think are alternate timelines," I spit out finally.

"Dreams?" Sam asked.

"Not dreams, visions," I attempted again. "I live the alternate timelines. I can't change anything, although that might just be because I don't really know I'm in them when I'm in them, so I don't really try. When I'm there, they seem like real life. It's when I wake up that things feel off."

"And this started after you touched the ancient doohickey?" Jack questioned. "How many times have I told you to stop touching things?"

"This was worse Jack," Vala grinned. "He leaned on it like a table. Very careless, Daniel."

"Careless you say?" Jack asked. "Would that have something to do with the reason why you were planning to leave SG-1?"

"Yes," I answered defiantly. "It could be that I wasn't thinking because I need a break. And just what in the hell are you doing here anyway, Jack?" I was not in the mood for the fun and games the arrival of General O'Neill tended to bring.

"Mitchell contacted me the minute your breakfast confession was over to get me to talk you out of it."

My gaze whipped in his direction.

"What?" Mitchell shrugged. "You know I want to keep the band together. Ain't no secret."

"And Jack pulled me off of the Hammond so I could talk you out of this crazy idea of yours," Sam grinned at me.

"Crazy?" I grumbled. "Didn't seem so crazy when you and Jack decided to leave, did it?"

"I do not believe you will find the happiness you are seeking if you depart in the manner you have suggested," Teal'c interjected.

I narrowed my eyes and turned to my right. "E tu, Teal'c?"

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. "You should not be angry with ColonelMitchell for contacting O'Neill and ColonelCarter. They would have returned to the SGC as soon as they learned of your illness."

"In a second," Sam confirmed with a nod.

I took a moment to glare at him further before I returned my attention to General Landry. "Anywhoo, I wasn't sure that what I was living through was an alternate timeline. I went through one timeline in which I never answered Jack's tissue box message and another where Ba'al went back in time and changed everything…by destroying the Stargate as it was transported by boat. Only Mitchell, Sam and I remained unchanged by the timeline because we had been gating away at the time. He killed Jack before he made it to the 'Gate, and, in the new timeline Ba'al was poised to conquer Earth with Teal'c as his First Prime. And…" I trailed off, suddenly realizing how little I wanted to say the next part out loud. But my eyes locked onto Vala against my will, and she picked up on my hesitation.

"What?" She frowned. "What happened to me?"

I looked down at the table, suddenly finding the ridges in the wood to be remarkably interesting to me. "Ba'al took Quetesh as his queen. She betrayed Ba'al. Her Jaffa killed everyone except for Mitchell, who made it through and supposedly reset the timeline." Sure, I had lied a little. She didn't need to know that she had been the one to end my life.

"So you got to meet Quetesh?" Vala asked and I tore my eyes away from the table for long enough to see that she had paled considerably.

"Wasn't easy," I answered before I could stop myself. To cover, I looked around the rest of the room. "None of it was. Watching everyone die. And it all seemed real enough that I could remember minute details of my life in the year I spent there. That was when I rushed off to Dr. Lee's office."

I watched understanding dawn in Vala's eyes. I could tell what she was thinking. She now understood why I had acted so strangely towards her.

"I didn't know what it was," I continued, struggling against the need to rush to protect her that had grown out of reliving the Odyssey journey. That was becoming more and more of a convenient explanation. "I was confused. And then I passed out and relived those fifty years in the time dilation field, and I knew I had to speak to Teal'c and get down to the bottom of things once and for all. I finally had experienced something that somebody could prove. And now that I've confirmed it with Teal'c and the translation, I need help figuring out how to make it stop. We need to turn off the device."

"I agree," General Landry nodded thoughtfully. "Dr. Lam?"

"He seems to be in perfect health other than the fainting spells, which only seem to occur when he's experiencing one of those visions," she sighed. "Dr. Jackson and I argued from the infirmary to the briefing room on how to handle this, and I believe I may have given in. He wants to be able to work as much as possible towards translating the writing on the device. Seeing as how there really is nothing I can do for his condition, I am agreeing to allow this."

I sighed a huge sigh of relief and grinned widely. "Thank you Dr. Lam."

She spoke over me. "On the condition that the minute he starts feeling fatigued, which is the first sign before he has one of these episodes, he is to lay down and rest until the feeling has passed. Dr. Jackson, if I have to scrape you off the floor and you weren't even attempting to rest, you will be tied to an infirmary bed until we get this figured out."

"Yes ma'am," I smiled shyly, a little embarrassed by the admonishment.

"Don't worry," Mitchell jumped in. "He won't ignore your orders because he will not be alone until this thing is over. We're each going to take turns to make sure he's following directions."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm aware that this is a newsflash, but I'm a grown man."

"Actually Mitchell," Jack smiled, "you took the words right out of my mouth."

"Yeah, well I've gotten to know our Action Jackson over the last coupla years, and I would like to think I know better than to expect him to stop working…ever."

"Come on guys!" Daniel shouted.

General Landry smiled, "Dr. Jackson, I think you need to learn to accept the fact that your friends know what's best for you."

"I fully agree with chaperones," Dr. Lam added. "You have been known to ignore me on occasion. I also want you to come in for evaluations twice a day so I can be sure your health is being maintained."

"Me first," Sam claimed me, like I was the last piece of pie in the mess hall. "I have to analyze the device and it stands to reason that Daniel should be there so I can start to look into his connection to it. So, it makes the most sense that he should stay with me in the lab."

"Oh, should he?" I groused. "Is that what he should do?" I glared at all of them. I could feel myself beginning to deflate. This was equal parts horrifying and exactly what I had been complaining about when I had decided to leave. I hated that everyone was moving on with their lives and I was stagnant. Now they were all back with me and my life couldn't seem to stop moving and I simply wanted it all to end. Be careful what you wish for.

"Daniel, you are way grumpier than usual," Vala noted before turning to Dr. Lam. "Is that a side effect?"

"No! I'm fine!" It was the lie I always told. The lie that usually kept them at bay. This time I found I was still staring at everyone's concerned faces. I added apologetically, "I just…what's going on in my head is tiring. And if you haven't guessed, I'm not having a good time seeing everything I'm seeing. So, without any further argument, why don't I just go with Sam to her office and start working on the device. She can monitor me, I can translate, and if I start to feel funny, feel free to attempt to hit me very hard in the head so maybe I miss this round of 'This Is Your Life'."

"I don't think that's how it works Daniel," Sam smiled, "but I'm sure someone here will want to hit you anyway. We'll call them when the time comes."

I looked to Vala who waved saucily at me and then returned my gaze to Sam, smiling widely and shrugging my shoulders all the way up to my cheeks.

"Is there anything the rest of us can do while you work?" Teal'c asked.

Sam winced at me. "Well, I could use Vala's intuitive technical abilities. So she'll be working with us, Daniel."

"Good," I nodded, "I could use some of her assistance with translating. She's picked up quite a lot in her time here." I smiled at her, an offer of peace.

She seemed to take it. "Cameron, I could put you in touch with the person who directed me to the tablet I brought with me when I first came here. He had the goods on an Alteran treasure before. Perhaps he can be of some use."

"Great," Mitchell chuckled without any hint of humor. "I get stuck with your friends."

"T," Jack offered. "You talk to Bra'tac, See what you can dig up. I will, unfortunately, contact the Tok'ra."

"Yay!" Vala clapped her hands together sarcastically.

"This is nobody's walk in the park, princess," Mitchell pointed out. " 'Specially not his." He motioned back at me.

"Yes. we all know how traumatic this has been for him," Vala acknowledged and it was meant to be a biting comment, but it fell flat.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Look, are we ready to go? Every second talking about this is another second closer to God-knows what kind of timeline."

"Yes, you may have to be involved with me again," Vala snapped, rising to her feet. "Frightening."

"Or I may get to watch you kill me again!" I had meant to comfort her. To reassure her. But I was on edge. I wasn't sure what was coming next and what if there was no way to shut this thing off? The words had spilt from my mouth before I could stop them, as they always tended to with her. Our arguments were always so rapid fire, it couldn't be helped.

"Oh." Her face fell.

Silence. Now that was a strange thing coming from her.

"As fun as this is not, all good things must come to an end," Landry shook his head. "Colonel Mitchell, take SG-3 with you to meet with Vala's contact. I will call together a briefing the minute any new information is acquired. People – let's do this as quickly and efficiently as possible. Dismissed."

That was all I needed. I was up, out of my chair and well on my way to the lab before Sam could even begin to say my name. I made my way over to her office without ever looking back and didn't stop moving until I was seated in front of the offending object, perched on a stool with Sam seated beside me.

My head was pounding. I hadn't slept, really slept, in days. My body had rested but my mind – my mind had been all over the place. I turned to look at Sam who was supposed to be working on figuring out how the device worked. Instead, she was giving me a look. A look I knew.

"I'm fine," I shook my head. "Where's Vala?"

"Setting Cam up with her contact," Sam answered eyeing me critically. "Are you?"

"Yes. I'm fine. I just want to solve this," I removed my glasses and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "I really don't want to know what the next one will be."

"Pretty bad huh?" Sam placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Bad," I answered, returning my glasses to my face and bending over the artifact. "But not that bad. Not as bad as I'm sure it can get. Sam, I've had so many regrets and near misses in my life…I do not want to see them all played out for me. Would you?"

Sam seemed to ponder that for a moment before sighing heavily. "Let's get to work, huh?"

And I smiled, knowing she got the point. Then I did as she commanded.

Work lasted about two hours before I began to feel a little shaky. I had uncovered a couple of things in my translations. Apparently, one day, the inhabitants of the planet we found the device on managed to suddenly ascend. They had been working on this through the traditional methods for a great deal of time and had suddenly accomplished their task. I thought I was getting a connotation from their choice of words that those left behind didn't trust their methods. It felt like they believed that some kind of supernatural, Oma-style assistance had been offered. Those remaining had decided that they wished to start figuring out why they weren't taken and pursuing that goal. How they were going to do it was somehow tied up in the device, but I was having a little trouble getting to it.

"Sam!" I called for her attention and her head popped up from under the device, where she had managed to pop open the hinges along the side so she could analyze the crystals inside.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked, but took one look at the fact that I was pretty sure my eyes were swimming and rushed around the artifact to grab me by my arm.

"Damn it! I don't want to do this again," I complained as she led me to the couch in the corner of the lab that each of us had crashed on at one point or another.

"I know Daniel, but I'm getting somewhere," Sam smiled. "I'm beginning to understand how the thing works which will give me an understanding of how to turn it off. Well, not how it works so much as what makes it work. How it works would imply I could even begin to understand how you are seeing alternate timelines. That shouldn't be possible."

"Shouldn't be?" I smiled weakly as the dizziness began to take over. I laid myself down on the couch. "If only…"

"Jack suggested I just smash the thing, but who knows how that would turn out," she smiled.

"Jack?" I raised my eyebrow. "You never call him Jack!"

"Um," she shrugged, "about that…"

And then I was asleep.

Libraries. I'd spent at least ¼ of my life in one. Probably much more. I never expected to be spending my life as an ascended being in one, but I guess you never really do know how things are going to turn out.

I never understood why we played these games. We had all of the knowledge and understanding of the world and yet we sat here in diners and libraries and watched the universe as though it was a television show. Something that we should be kept apprized of without ever actually participating in. We had so much knowledge and it was all so much bigger than SG-1, but I, like Oma, couldn't help but take an interest in the individual people.

Now that I had access to all of the ins and outs of every civilization, all of the grand questions I could ever want answered, only the small things seemed important to me anymore. The others keep telling me that was not the way it's supposed to work.

That's what had gotten me locked up in here to begin with.

I interfered with Jack. I interfered with Teal'c. I interfered by trying to kill Anubis. Three strikes and I was out – brought in for a little talking to by one Oma Desala and some of the others. That was when I had discovered the mistake that was Anubis and the punishment it had merited Oma. And I had gotten angry. Of course I had gotten angry. Oma had made a mistake and not only was she being punished for it, but the entire galaxy was being laid to waste. I argued and I was asked a question.

I could have gone with my initial instinct and lied. When they asked me what I was going to do from this point forward, I could have claimed to understand their policy of non-interference. Then I could have returned to human form and fought this battle in a way where I could actually make a difference.

Instead, I lashed out in a fit of temper, self-righteousness (those were mine), courage and hubris (those I had learned from Jack). I told the others that there was no way I was going to ignore the plight of the lower beings. I told them exactly what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it.

It was something akin to pleading guilty in a trial. I had virtually sentenced myself. The others didn't want to allow me to do what I wished to do so they couldn't allow me to run loose. Instead, they assigned me to this old dust covered musky smelling library. There were a few of them waiting outside, in case I tried to escape, ready to engage me in a battle neither of us could ever win.

So, all I had was everything inside, which were only things of the past, nothing of the present or the future, nothing I could taint with my interference.

I read. Soaked up everything I could. Got to know those I had loved better. Learned some things about others that I had never known. Absorbed their past history, as though I was reading books about their lives.

Those close to me, I read about over and over again. I would read through all of them and then read about someone new. And each time I read about them, more filled the book. The others were allowing me more and more information on them.

And then one day, I picked up Sam's book, excited to find a new chapter at the end. And when I got to the end it was only to discover that Anubis had managed to discover the device on Dakara, the one that had been used to seed life in the galaxy, and he had turned it on everybody, effectively destroying all life.

Sam was dead. Her book was over. They were all dead.

That was the last time I read any books in that library. It was also the day that Oma joined me there.

My eyes worked very hard to open and when they did, the fluorescent lights above me in the lab assaulted my eyes and caused me to force them shut again.

"Sam?" I coughed, my voice dry and raspy.

"She stepped out with Vala to get you some dinner," Jack's voice answered. "How you doin'?"

"Dinner? God what time is it?" I asked.

"Well, you didn't sleep the entire day away. Just a few hours this time."

"That's odd, considering," I shrugged and then made another attempt to open my eyes, wincing as the light sent spikes of pain through my brain.

"Considering?" Jack prodded.

"I just lived an alternate timeline as an ascended being," I answered, trying to sit up a little and being treated to a healthy dose of nausea. "It's spotty. I guess I couldn't have remembered all of it. It was too much knowledge. But I remember enough to know that when I didn't come back, it didn't go well for us."

"Well, we keep trying to tell you we need you around, Danny boy!" He teased, helping me right myself on the couch. "What's wrong?"

"Headache. Nail in the head variety," I grumbled, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands.

"Not what I meant," He nudged my shoulder slightly with his own. "This kinda crap happens to us all the time. I'm talking about before that. What has you running, spacemonkey?"

I lifted my head up slightly to look at him. He was serious. Damn him.

"I've known you longer than anybody else," Jack reminded me, as though I needed reminding. "You believe in the Stargate program. You live for what you learn here. What's going on?"

I looked at him. Tried to assess whether he was anywhere near making fun of me for anything. Opened my mouth to speak.

"Daniel!" Sam rushed into the room fresh off of a laugh she was clearly sharing with Vala. "You're awake."

"Um…yes," I agreed. I mouthed "Later" to Jack and then stood, making my way back to the artifact, albeit a little unsteadily.

Vala rushed forward and wrapped an arm around my waist for support before I even realized I needed it. "Are you sure you're up for this?"

The worry in her eyes made me smile. "No, not really. But I'm not going to pass out right now and unfortunately, it's not going to translate itself."

Vala pursed her lips and eyed me worriedly, but didn't argue. "Let me help you then?"

I guessed that our latest unspoken war was over, ending how most of them did – without ever talking them out, without ever discussing why we were arguing and without ever solving much of anything. For people who tackled huge trials in which the fate of the galaxy was in jeopardy, it didn't seem we had a clue on how to tackle either of our personal problems. One day we would need to work on that. Right now, as ever, I didn't have the time. So I guessed.

We settled into a rhythm. Jack cracked jokes to lighten the mood as Sam tested some energy readings she was getting off of the device that she didn't seem to understand. She was trying to understand what kind of energy it was, or something like that. My head may not have hurt so much that I didn't understand the translation, but it did hurt more than enough to dissuade me from even trying to understand one of Sam's explanations.

With Vala's help, grabbing references to throw at me (sometimes literally…and…ow…), I had managed to get through another significant portion of the text in the three or four hours that followed.

This was the part that made me want to scream. After a great deal of blathering on and on, the text finally began to make a great deal of sense to me. A religious cult. A religious cult had tampered with a perfectly good Alteran device and made it into a damaging, brain melting piece of equipment. No wonder they hadn't ascended. Those that attempted to gain worship through false promises were the lowers of all the lowers. That was why Anubis' ascension had been such a blight on our record.

Our record. For a moment there I had forgotten I wasn't an ascended being.

The room began to spin and I gripped the table roughly, struggling to keep my balance.

"Time to lay down, darling," Vala advised, grabbing me around my waist again and, with Jack's help, propelling me towards the couch.

As my head hit the pillow, I noticed Vala shooing Jack away. I pretended I didn't.

"Don't worry Daniel. I will try to use what you've been working on to get me a little further into the text. You just rest."

"I don't rest," I frowned. "It's like being awake even when you're sleeping. I feel like crap." My voice sounded rough and weighted with fatigue.

Her hand reached out and pressed against my cheek. She smiled at me.

"Are we okay?" I asked, simply. My detachment with this timeline was increasing. I didn't have time to get too far into it, but I needed to know before I went, even if my brain was at war as far as which Vala to believe in.

"I'm fine. We're fine. I can't say I'm not curious to know all of the many things you are thinking right now, but I'm fine."

She was full of it again. Any version of Vala I met could tell me that. Still, the fact that she felt the need to lie right now made me feel like I had been correct in trusting her to begin with.

I leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ignoring the shiver I could feel passing through her as I did.

"Vala, I hate to admit it, but I'm scared to fall asleep. I just need this to stop. The possibilities of what I could see are already starting to get to me. Please, don't leave, okay? Please stay with me until I wake up again?" I asked her, and my hand was grasping hers as tightly as it could without hurting her. I hated how desperate I sounded.

"Of course, Daniel," she nodded. "Whatever you need."

As I began to fade, I could hear Jack asking if I was really alright.

Vala responded by reciting our well-worn lie once again, only this time she seemed like she was trying to convince herself. "He's going to be fine, Jack. He's going to be fine."


	5. Awareness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on out, things get a bit crazy and sad. So be ready...

It was my fault. I had been the one to want the aerial survey and now I was staring down at a badly wounded man, Airman Simon Wells, struggling to do anything I could to make him more comfortable despite how bad things looked.

Janet was knelt down beside me, treating the wounds and trying to offer some semblance of comfort in the face of the racket going on around us.

"Okay, you're gonna be fine," I assured as Janet worked.

"That son of a bitch! He came out of nowhere! He shot me in the back," Wells cried out. I needed to distract him from that train of thought quickly.

"Just talk about something else right now, Simon. Uh, what's going on at home right now?" I asked, anxiously stealing glances at Janet to see her diligent concentration on the man's injuries. If anybody could save him…

"Uh, my…wife…is pregnant," Wells announced.

My God, really? I felt my drive to get the man home go up even higher. Something about leaving a child without a father really kicked me in the gut. Not surprising, considering my own past. "Yeah, that your…that your first?" I wanted to help as much as possible, but I wasn't sure if there was anything I could really do. I felt more like I was in the way.

He nodded at me, trying to hide his pain.

"Congratulations," I said. I truly couldn't help but identify with the child.

Wells winced, crying out as Janet examined his wound. I was just thinking how bad this looked, but Janet shot me a reassuring gaze and then shot one at Wells.

"That's good, at least you felt that."

Just then my radio crackled to life. "Colonel O'Neill, our position is being compromised! We're not going to be able to hold the Gate for long!"

I looked to Janet, and she keyed her radio, shaking her head. "Colonel, I'm gonna need more time to stabilize this patient. He can't be moved yet!"

"Go without me! Leave me!" Wells pleaded. There was no way. Nobody got left behind. Janet and I both knew that. We would carry him home even if he was dead. Either way, he was making his way back.

"Nobody is going anywhere," Janet told him gently.

"I can't believe I'm not gonna see my son," Wells whimpered. He was panicking and I needed to find a way to keep him calm so Janet could do her job as quickly as possible.

"Okay. Just stay focused. Stay focused. Y-y-you know it's a boy you're gonna have, right?"

He nodded, then groaned in pain. "Tell me the truth. I'm not gonna make it, right?"

"You're gonna be fine," I tried again, taking the IV bag Janet was handing me and holding it up.

"Doctor Jackson? Please-please-please, just let me just tell my wife—Let me tell my wife that—" Wells cried out, becoming more and more agitated by the second. I looked at Janet and immediately knew that she was thinking what I was thinking. I nodded to her. I was going to allow him to tell his wife for himself and I explained that to him as I handed Janet the IV bag, which she slung over her shoulder and dug into my backpack, pulling out the camera I used to record my archeological findings.

The minute the camera was on him, Wells began to cry. I wasn't having such an easy time myself. My mind kept flashing with images of Sha're and I laying on the ground inside of a tent as she used her final words to tell me she loved me.

"I'm so sorry about this. Ah! I love you so much…God, I-I just-I just wanted…" Wells began, but then something Janet did to help stabilize him through Wells into further pain and he began to scream at me. "Oh God! God! Shut it off! Shut it off! I don't want her to see me die! Please! God!"

Janet leaned over Wells, brushing his hair away from his face and spoke gently but forcefully to him as the sounds of a firefight raged around them. "Simon. Simon! Look at me! You are not going to die, okay? I did not come all the way out here for nothing. Now, I've stemmed the bleeding. We're going to get you on a stretcher. We're going to get you home with your family in no time, okay? Now you hang in there, Airman!"

As she spoke, I could see Wells' fears begin to quell. Janet was good at that – at making you feel calm and cared for when you were injured and scared. She was not only an amazing doctor, but she was a damn good friend to have. When she cared for you, she made it her personal mission to keep you safe, sound and sane no matter what you had been through.

I admired and loved her. And that's why, when I happened to spot a Jaffa standing at the ready, with his staff weapon poised to shoot the good doctor, I jumped in her way, shoving her out of the path of the staff blast.

As I made the decisive motion, I knew that I was tipping the cosmic scales, paying back for all of my failures, my failures to my team, to Sha're, to Oma. I was making a split second decision to save a life that would undoubtedly go on to save many more lives – certainly more lives than I ever could.

The pain of the blast was the last thing I felt before death took hold.

My eyelids fluttered open only to slam shut again at the site of the bright lights hanging over my head. I heard movement to the right of me and could see the light dimming behind my eyelids.

"Sorry Daniel," Sam's voice came to me through the haze and din of my last vision. "I didn't realize the lights would bother you and I couldn't see my book."

I opened my eyes and turned to look at her with a slight smile.

"I didn't expect you to be awake so soon," she explained, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

Something was wrong. And it wasn't just her expression that told me so. Her hair was much shorter and much lighter than it had been earlier today. Much more like it had been in the past.

I began to panic. How long had I been out cold this time that she had taken the time to get a cut and color?

"Um…what landed me in here?" I asked, as my other concern occurred to me. When I had fallen asleep, I had been in the lab on the couch. Now I was back in the infirmary.

Sam looked startled by the question as she settled back into the chair she had brought to my bedside. "What do you mean, Daniel?" Her eyes narrowed. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"I remember going to sleep on your couch after talking to Vala and then I had another vision and then I woke up here," I explained. I shrugged, my body suddenly erupting in pain with the action. This was the moment I was sure something was wrong. I was not this hurt before I fell asleep.

"What?" Sam glared at me. "God, I was afraid of this." She jumped to her feet and rushed to the intercom. "Please page Dr. Frasier to the infirmary."

Ok. Now I was freaked out.

"Dr. Frasier?" I forced myself to sit up in my bed despite the pain that shot through my insides as I did. "Is she okay? Is it the staff blast I'm being treated for?"

I couldn't straighten things out in my head. The last things I remembered before becoming unconscious were too varied. I could swear I had died taking a staff blast for Janet and at Vala's hands…I could swear I had just fallen asleep on the couch in Sam's lab.

Sam dropped back onto the chair, running her hands through her short blonde hair and scrubbed her hands over her face before looking back up at me. "Daniel, you were exposed to radiation on Kelowna. A deadly dose of radiation. Do you remember that?"

"Of course I do," I grumbled. "I mean, how could I forget? But that was years ago?"

Sam sighed. "Daniel, what are you talking about? That was a couple of days ago. Who is Vala? Why do you think you're here?"

"I'm sorry," I played along, trying to be sure what was going on here. This must be another one of my visions. But I couldn't remember my visions when I was in one of them. So just what in the hell was going on here?

I shook my head as though trying to clear the cobwebs and used my memory of the event. "I got a little confused. Had some really weird dreams. But I don't remember much after being unconscious here, now that I think about. What happened?"

Sam heaved a deep sigh of relief, taking a hand and smoothing it over my forehead, which felt alarmingly raw. "My father healed you using the Goa'uld healing device. You were pretty close to dying, but he healed you as well as he could. It took a lot out of him. He promised he'd be back to try again, but I'm afraid he didn't heal you completely. I don't know how long your better condition will last or if it even will. We have to wait and see."

A deep dread spread through my heart. This was exactly what I hadn't wanted. This was why I had taken Oma's path. I wanted death or ascension but certainly not this in-between "wait and see" situation.

I took a deep breath and it rattled through my lungs followed by excruciating pain. "Oh damn, Sam!" I whimpered, losing the battle where I was trying to sound like I was fine. "I need some more pain medication!"

Thankfully, Janet rushed into the room with a vial in hand, ready to administer some. "It's okay Daniel," she soothed as she injected a sedative into my IV. "You're going to feel much better in a few minutes, I promise."

As I stared up at her and Sam's faces, the fuzziness that was beginning to set in almost immediately from the sedative made their faces look almost angelic. All at once, I was sure I had made the right choice sacrificing myself for Janet. She was definitely more valuable than I was.

When I woke up, I was much more clear on everything that was going on. Janet believed that maybe my confusion was some sort of side effect of the medication they'd had me on. Either way, everything made a lot more sense when I had woken up.

The following two years went by in a slow moving drag of doctors visits, pain and anti-nausea medications, blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants, Jacob's healing device and consulting jobs at the SGC that were given more out of pity than out of real necessity, I was sure. But the Leukemia that had developed within days of my supposedly heroic efforts on Kelowna never went away. In the end, I had died surrounded by my family, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Janet and General Hammond, in the military hospital near the base.

I was 39 years old.

When my eyes flickered open again, everything was cloaked in dark, which was a refreshing change from constantly waking up to infirmary lighting. I looked around the room but I couldn't see a thing. My eyes hadn't adjusted to my surroundings as of yet and I was left, floating in confusion, unsure of whether or not this was a vision or reality.

"Jack? Sam? Vala?" I called out, just in time to hear a woman sigh beside me in the bed and the rustling of sheets.

Sam's couch didn't have sheets. So, vision then…

"Daniel?"

My eyes closed against the sound of the sweet, lyrical voice of my dead wife. Tears filled my eyes and spilled over onto my cheeks. This whole thing, from beginning to end, everything about these visions were pure torture. I just wanted to come back to the real world, where things were relatively quiet and peaceful and where I was simply waiting for the next tragedy to happen, rather than living through past ones or having the reality of what I lost thrown in my face.

A light went on in the room. My bedside lamp. The bedside lamp that had sat on the bedside table of an apartment that had been sold years ago when I had died. And yet, here I was sitting, bathed in the light of that lamp, looking into the wide, chocolate-brown eyes of my wife, who was staring at me in concern.

"Daniel, my love, why do you cry? Did you dream of bad things?"

I took a deep breath. "Yes Sha're. I dreamt of bad things for you and in turn, bad things for me."

She sat up a little more in bed, turning to face me and placing a gentle hand on my cheek. "You had the dream again? The one where the Tok'ra weren't able to save me after Teal'c shot me? The one where I died?"

My breath hitched in sharply. God, this was exactly like what Sha're had fed me through the ribbon device. Had that really ever been a possibility? I had never known. I had always thought it had just been a figment of my imagination.

"Yes. That's the one," I remarked, the sound coming through raspy and clouded by my tears.

"Well, I'm not dead, Daniel," she whispered, clearly disturbed by my reaction as I rubbed my eyes and the bridge of my nose as if it could make this all go away. "I'm right here."

She wrapped her arms around me and I shuddered at the feeling. I couldn't help how violently I reacted when I shoved her away. I just couldn't allow myself to believe it was real.

If I did, it would be too difficult for me to wake up.

"You're not real! You're not real! You're not real!" I shouted. I didn't even recognize my voice as it screamed. Sha're looked on in horror as I jumped to my feet and clapped my hands over my ears to tune out her shouts.

Suddenly, one of the mysteries surrounding the artifact became clear in my mind.

I only realized it as I covered my ears, slammed my eyes shot and continuously shouted, "You're not real!" until I bolted up from the couch and dove off, tumbling to my feet, still in the same pose, still screaming my mantra.

"Daniel!" Vala yelled, grabbing my face in both of her hands and shaking me a little until my eyes had opened and I was focused fully on her. Her raven black hair, her slate grey eyes, her furrowed brow, her full lips.

I dropped my hands from my ears and let out a harsh, ragged sob.

My eyes left hers for just long enough to make out Sam, Jack, Teal'c and Mitchell perched around the lab table in front of several Chinese food containers through my impaired vision. My eyes returned to hers then, and I sniffled sharply.

"Where are my glasses?"

"What?" Vala asked, clearly thrown off by my question. "Um, here." She said, pulling my glasses from where they hung off of the front of her shirt and placing them on my face gently. "Daniel? What the hell just happened? Why did you wake up that way? Who isn't real?"

I stared at the desperation in her eyes and suddenly realized I couldn't look at her with the memory of Sha're so fresh in my mind.

I turned towards the rest of the group. Every one of them regarded me with worry.

"Daniel, what happened?" Vala tried again.

I wiped at my eyes and turned back to the table where the artifact rested, taking off towards it and ignoring her question.

"Daniel?" Jack asked, examining me.

I held onto the table, propping myself up against it. "I just became aware of my visions during my visions. I know I'm there. I just got a healthy dosage of the day Janet died, dying of cancer after not ascending after Kelowna, and, hey Sha're being alive even knowing it was all fake. All a vision."

"Damn," Mitchell muttered. "Just…damn."

Silence permeated the room. I settled down in my seat and looked at the artifact. Throwing myself into my work had always been the best therapy for me. There was no reason why it couldn't help now.

"Ok," Vala breathed, "someone's going to have to explain what half of that just meant."

"No," I sighed. "No. No, you won't. I just need to get back to work. I just need to figure this out so I can turn this off now."

"Alright Daniel," Sam comforted, pulling her chair up closer to the artifact. "Let's get to work now."

We settled in and just as I had begun to translate, Vala interrupted. As always. Only now it was much less annoying.

"I'll give you some of the beef and broccoli that was ordered for you but claimed by me if you tell me what has you so worked up."

I looked at her, letting out yet another deep sigh. "I figured it out. These visions I'm having, they are why the 155 men in the temple killed themselves. The effects of the device drove them insane. And if I don't stop them, the visions, I'm going to lose my mind as well."

Teal'c, Mitchell and Jack stopped eating. Sam looked up from her work. All eyes were on me. And then, thank God, Vala broke the tension with her incredibly useful irreverence.

"Well then, we better get to work. Because I came here for a reason and I'll be damned if you're going to hang yourself from the roof of a temple under my watch."

I'd be damned if I was going to hang myself from the roof of a temple. But if I didn't figure out the answer to this puzzle soon, the balcony of my apartment was looking like an idea I may be revisiting sooner rather than later. And I wanted to try to avoid that.


	6. What Was Lost And Found Is Lost Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't warn you too much without spoiling the fun!

"I have a bad feeling about this," I whispered to nobody in particular. However, as I always was when I let something loose that way, I was really talking to Vala because, as ever, she was the closest in earshot.

We were standing backstage at an outdoor press event, intended to introduce the heroes of the Tau'ri, the heroes of the Stargate program, to the world. Ignoring Sam's protests after her experience in the alternate universe where things had not gone well after a global reveal, the President had recently exposed the Stargate program under the belief that, while the universe was relatively at peace, a better result would be achieved. It had been a gamble, but he was correct. The large majority had received the news well. Still there were fringe protest groups popping up everywhere.

And now, we were standing backstage in a large outdoor amphitheater called Red Rocks here in Colorado, waiting to be revealed to the world as the flagship team of Stargate Command. All of us – Landry, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Mitchell, Vala and I. Just waiting for this strange announcement. None of us wanted any glory for the things that we had done. Well…almost none of us.

"How could you possibly have a bad feeling about this, Daniel?" Vala asked, her smile dazzling as she tossed her silky curls over her shoulder and primped for her unveiling. "We have been risking our behinds for this backwater planet of yours for a very long time – far longer for some. Isn't it about time we get some recognition for it?"

"No," I said definitively, as though there was not a small part of me that took satisfaction in the idea that the work I had done in my field before stepping through the 'Gate would now finally be accepted as fact and not as mere science fiction.

"You are such a grump, Daniel," Vala shrugged. "I'm just hoping someone gives me something pretty for my troubles."

I looked at her in disbelief, only to realize that she was smirking at me. She wasn't even remotely serious. Not with that grin on her face. I knew that smile. That was the smile she gave me when she was purposely teasing me.

I bumped her shoulder with mine. She made a big show of flopping a little to her right before coming back and bumping me with hers.

"Relax," she reached up and ran a hand over my cheek, cupping my face. "It'll be fine. I know there's been a lot of frightening buildup, but a lot of worlds deal with this and are fine. This one will be fine too."

My eyes closed against the feeling of her hand on my cheek. Things had been progressing oddly between us lately. She'd begun to respect my boundaries and I had begun wishing she'd respect them less. I had never been one for being too touchy or hugging too much, but with her, it had been a dynamic that I had become used to. I missed it. So, I admit, I reveled a bit in the feeling of her hand against my cheek. Flirtation and biting remarks were the languages we spoke to each other. Without them, it was almost as though we weren't talking.

I opened my eyes and found her examining my reaction, a confounded look upon her face. She slid her hand off of my cheek with a quirky little smile and turned away from me but I caught her by the wrist before I was even sure what I was doing. "Wait."

She turned back to face me and she was practically vibrating with nerves. "What?" She giggled playfully, but it was a poor attempt. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and grimaced.

I loved her. I knew it right in that moment.

"Um…after this media circus is done, would you like to get some dinner? I really don't want to go out with people following us though. You know, 'Hey look! It's SG-1! We know them now!' So instead we should order something in. You could come to my place?" I blurted then swallowed hard.

She smiled and the nerves seem to disappear from her face, although there was something else there. Something that closely resembled disappointment. "Sure. I'll tell the guys. I'm sure they'll need a dinner to unwind after all of this."

"Not what I meant," I responded, slowly. What if she was trying to get out of it? Had I sounded like I was inviting everyone? I couldn't even remember what I had said.

"You mean…" She trailed off, eyes wide. Then her voice took on a slightly gravelly tone. "This wouldn't be another one of your non-date thingies, would it?"

"Let's be honest here," I teased, flashing her a grin. "Even if I said it wasn't a date, we both know it still would be."

A happy smile spread across her face, quick and genuine. "In that case, the answer is most certainly yes." Then, she launched herself into my arms, tossing her arms around my shoulders and, even as I tried to stop her, moved to plant a kiss on my lips.

"Not here," I shook my head vehemently.

"Lovebirds!" Jack's voice called out from the front of the line, which made me 100% sure that everyone had seen Vala's little outburst.

I looked to him and Jack had this huge smile on his face. "Daniel." I could hear it in the tone. He knew what I had just done and he was happy about it. My eyes floated to everyone down the line. All were smiling at me like I was a baby who had just taken its first steps. Even Landry.

"Good boy," Jack laughed. "If I was closer I would muss your hair. You picked a hell of a place to finally figure it out there, Spacemonkey!"

"Jack," I warned. Then a smile broke out on my face unbidden. "Yeah." I shrugged.

My friends laughed and it was like music. Especially Vala's lyrical giggle as she planted a kiss on my cheek that burned right down to my toes.

"That's our cue!" Landry who had been half listening to us and half listening for an announcement that would signal our entrance to the stage, shouted back to us, not without some level of humor. "Time to make our appearance."

"The head of Stargate Command, Major General Hank Landry!" President Hayes announced.

Landry headed out onto the stage decked out in his dress blues, looking every bit the proud papa as he stared back at the rest of us once he made it to his position on the stage.

"Former leader of SG-1, former head of Stargate Command and current Director of Homeworld Security, Major General Jack O'Neill!"

Jack, also in his dress blues, shot a sheepish glance back at me and a shrug before walking out and greeting the thunderous round of applause that met him.

"Doctor of astrophysics, engineer, former leader and former second in command of SG-1, one time operational leader of the Atlantis Expedition and commander of one of our battle cruisers, The General Hammond, Colonel Samantha Carter!"

Sam grimaced and headed out onto the stage. Mitchell turned to those of us still remaining and sighed heavily. "My intro is going to sound lame and empty next to that!"

"Current leader of SG-1, Colonel Cameron Mitchell!"

He made a little hand motion to tell us all he had called it before heading out onto the stage. Vala cupped her hand around my ear and whispered to me, her warm breath on my ear sending shivers through me that I had to fight not to react to. "Poor Cameron – forever in Jack's shadow."

I nodded to her in agreement.

"Jaffa warrior and leader of his people – a key ally that helped us to defeat the Goa'uld, Master Teal'c!"

Teal'c raised his eyebrow, looked back at Vala and I and then left, dressed in a simple brown suit, to meet his public.

"Ally against the Ori, technical wiz and tactical genius, Vala Mal Doran!"

She turned and looked at me. "Tactical genius?"

"I did your intro," I grinned. "It's all true."

She turned to me, a brilliant smile on her face and tilted her head, examining me for a moment before leaning forward, placing her hands on my shoulders, and pressing a sweet lingering kiss to my lips. When she pulled back she was grinning. She raced off in the direction of the stage, somehow managing to run in those spiky heels and the powder blue sheath dress that fit her like Saran Wrap, as I watched her go, a goofy grin on my face.

"Archeologist, master of languages, accomplished negotiator, and the man who figured out how the Stargate worked, Dr. Daniel Jackson!"

The grin immediately melted from my face. This was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever done. Absolutely ridiculous. It was like we were on a game show, being paraded out for the masses.

With a heavy sigh and a beckoning wave from Vala, I straightened my gray suit and headed out onto the stage. I took my seat on the dais beside Vala. I must've looked as troubled by this whole thing as I was, because Vala reached out and patted my hands where they rested on the table, reassuringly.

The floor was opened up to questions. We did our best to answer the public. To explain things that had happened, how they had happened and how we had defeated the enemy. I tried not to answer unless something was directed at me. Vala jumped at the chance to eloquently answer any question she had the information to answer for her adoring public. We were just so different.

And then, in the middle of a simple question that Sam was answering about the science behind the 'Gate, a gasp erupted in the crowd. They looked horrified and I began to look around to see what had just happened. It happened so quickly. I seemed to only register things one by one.

First, the blood splatter on Vala's face. Then Teal'c slumping off of his chair, having been shot in the head. I moved to react, jumping to my feet but it all felt too slow. Jack had done the same and had received a wound in his shoulder for his trouble. The shots were soundless and quick. I had no idea where they were coming from but I was trying to assess their location. And then, Vala was pulling me hard by my arm down behind the dais.

"Get down dammit!" She yelled at me. A bullet exploded through my chair just as I ducked down to her level. And when my knees hit the floor I saw it. The pool of red blood that was spreading across the stomach of the pretty powder blue dress it had taken her 2 hours to pick out.

"Vala!" I shouted. And then my attention was taken away as a bullet hit Mitchell through the dais table. Another fatal wound.

Another errant shot hit General Landry even as the Secret Service had managed to get the President to safety through a crowd of very scared people, who were trampling each other to get through the exits of the amphitheater.

"Daniel," Vala whispered, but her voice sounded wet and thick. "We need to get out of here."

I nodded. She was right. I looked across the table towards Sam. She nodded. She had Jack's arm around her shoulder and she was pulling him towards the edge of the table. Jack, at least was on his feet. Vala wasn't going anywhere on her own feet.

Unthinking, I scooped her up in my arms, even as she cringed against me, trying not to cry out in pain and draw more attention to us.

I took off at a full speed run. At this point, if whoever was firing at us killed me, I couldn't be compelled to care. Especially when I heard the sound of a body slumping to the floor behind me and Jack screaming out Sam's name in anguish. I felt a bullet tear through my suit pants, but narrowly miss me. I forced myself not to turn, not to stop until Vala and I were safely backstage again.

That's when I turned and saw Jack, staring out in my direction, cradling what was left of Sam in his arms. I nodded to him and I knew he knew. He was shaking his head at me. He knew what I knew.

Vala was next to go. It was written all over my shirt in her blood.

I turned towards her and pulled her into my arms. "God, I knew this was a bad idea. Dammit Vala, this is not the way this is supposed to go down."

She grinned weakly, but her face quickly returned to its initial grim expression. "So sorry to ruin your plans. What were they again?"

Suddenly, what I had just seen got very real, very quickly.

Tears filled my eyes, quickly overflowing onto my cheeks and poisoning my ability to speak very clearly.

This was not happening again. I was not watching somebody I loved die again. I was not losing yet another opportunity for happiness. This could not be real, because if it was, everyone I had ever loved, was either wounded or dead.

"Oh my God, they're all…you…" I muttered, trying to put together any form of coherent thought.

"Daniel," She reached out and stroked my cheek and I tried to ignore the blood I knew she had accidentally smeared on my face. "My Daniel, I'm so sorry. I think in some ways, I'm the lucky one here."

"You're going to be fine," I whispered hoarsely to her, running my hands through her hair. "You hear that?" I asked, referring to the sirens that only now seemed to be resonating in my mind. "They're going to help you."

Vala groaned horribly in pain, and it was only then that I realized that the blood hadn't simply spread. She had been hit in two different places. One in her stomach and one that I was pretty sure had hit some other vital organ, but I couldn't seem to remember my biology right now. All I could tell for sure was that, if the ambulance didn't get there soon, she was most certainly going to die.

"I don't think they're going to make it in time Daniel," She said, almost exactly as I was thinking it. She reached out and gripped me tightly to her, pulling my face close to hers. "I need to say it. If they save me, then I'll have said it and there's no harm done, but if I don't say it…."

I nodded as fast as I could, urging her on, desperate to hear what was on her mind. I gripped her hand in mine, my forehead and nose was pressed against hers.

"I love you, my Daniel," she cried.

"I love you too Vala – and that's why you need to –"

And then her lips were pressed against mine, desperately, as though she were trying to remember every second of the moment. I made the same effort.

When she pulled back, I pulled her into my arms. Almost immediately I felt her tense in my arms. "I'm sorry Vala. I'm so sorry."

And then I heard her breath release and her body relax against mine.

God help me, I didn't want to let go of her. I didn't until Jack and the paramedics pulled her from my arms.

We were the only survivors, Jack and me. I sat on the floor under the table. I wasn't crying anymore. All of my tears were left behind on Vala's shoulders.

Jack had been patched on scene. He had told the paramedics that he wasn't going to any hospital until I was fit to go with him. He was playing the tough guy too, but he was a mess. He just felt like he needed to take care of me, so he boarded up his emotions and set about handling my destruction. Jack was always one to face tragedy with a need to do something, anything.

I had been staring at the floor, listening to the world as it passed by around me – that's when I picked it up.

"They say they've got both shooters in custody," one of the paramedics gossiped. "They're bringing them to their vehicle right now."

I looked up. Made eye contact with Jack. Got to my feet. And walked. Walked to where I saw the police cars had lined up. Waited for them to return. Jack grabbed me by my elbow and pulled me into a darkened corner of the theater's box office.

"What the hell are you doing Daniel?" He had wanted to sound commanding. I could tell. He sounded exhausted.

I opened my suit jacket to reveal the Beretta, strapped into its holster. I had started carrying it on my person ever since the Lucian Alliance had put bounties on all of our heads.

"Danny, come on….I can't handle talking you down right now. You don't mean this. You'll regret it in the morning." He argued, but I could tell from his voice that he was lying. That he agreed. That he wanted me to do what I had planned.

I didn't say a word. It was almost as though I wanted my last words to be the ones I said to Vala. Instead I simply pulled my gun out of its holster and held it sideways against Jack's chest, beckoning him to take it. Telling him he had just as much of a right to think the way I was.

"Oh for crying out loud," Jack said, pulling his own gun out from a hidden holster at his ankle. "Keep yours."

The police were making their way to the cars. I immediately caught sight of the shooters. One was a known Trust operative. The other was one of the protestors I had seen on the news the night before.

I began to walk out but Jack grabbed me by the shoulder. "If anyone's going to do this, it should be me. This isn't like you, Daniel."

I felt myself let out a dry wheeze of a laugh. "I'm pretty sure I lost every bit of who I was just now. They killed Teal'c, Mitchell and Landry. They killed Sam and Vala. Do you really think they deserve our mercy?"

"No."

The ensuing trial was well worth the satisfaction of killing both of those bastards. Well worth it for both of us.

I jolted out of my sleep and didn't even pause. I simply hurtled myself out of the couch in the lab, to find myself face to face with Mitchell.

"Yo! Jackson! What's goin' on?"

I was breathing heavily and my eyes were leaking beyond my control.

It had been a whole week since my realization that this thing was going to kill me and I had seen my friends die in every way I could think of. I had seen what would have happened if I hadn't interfered when Ba'al had been killing Jack over and over again. I had seen what had happened when I was unsuccessful in my attempts to keep Sam awake when the parasites infected us and she died. I had watched as Teal'c was destroyed by Apophis almost immediately after choosing to help us. I had seen Cam die of the Prior plague and had watched helplessly as Vala was burned alive, all because I had never thought to mention that we were from another galaxy.

I was pretty sure I couldn't stand another week of this.

"Bad one," I muttered, pushing past Mitchell and heading towards the door of the lab.

"Whoa there sunshine! Where the hell do you think you're goin'? I'm not to let you out of my sight. Doctor's orders."

"Whatever Cam," I argued and turned away before thinking better of it and turning back towards him. "Never allow SG-1 to be revealed to the public. I mean the members of SG-1 – nobody should ever know who we are. Got it? Tell whoever will listen."

"Um…why?" He asked. He was giving me that look everyone had been starting to hone this last week. The "are you still sane?" look.

"Because if you don't we'll all die. Well…you'll all die," I explained. "I have to talk to Vala. I'm going right to Vala's quarters. I will not stop in between. But you're going to let me go."

I took off down the hallway, only pausing long enough to hear Mitchell's witty comment. "Well, sure, if you're gonna Jedi mind trick me."

When I made it to Vala's quarters, I knocked three times before rushing off to my own quarters, where I had stashed the secret keycard I had to her room. I'd had it made back in the days when she was known to misbehave. I never used it normally, but this seemed like an important occasion.

Rushing back to her quarters, I slid the key card through the reader and gained entrance to a Vala-less room. Damn it! Where was she?

My balance pitched suddenly and as I slammed into the wall, I realized I was about to journey into another vision. I fought it, tried to stay conscious, but before I knew it I was tunneling out of reality and all I had time to do was to collapse onto Vala's bed before everything around me seemed to disappear.

"Jackson!"

I jolted awake. I had been sleeping on my desk, my face stuck to a book about the Clava Thessara Infinatus. I looked up to find Mitchell, Teal'c and Sam staring back at me.

"Any word?" I asked, my voice still gravelly from sleep.

Mitchell paused, looking around hesitantly. I looked to Sam and back to him and I knew something was terribly wrong. Even Teal'c was visibly upset.

"We received the DNA results from the blast site," Mitchell shook his head. "I'm sorry. Vala was in the Trust safe house when it exploded. I wish I could tell you she wasn't."

I heard the words, but I didn't seem capable of making sense of them. I cleared my throat. "I really thought we'd find her."

"We know Daniel," Sam patted my shoulder.

"Um…I need some time," I said, struggling with the lump in my throat. I heard the way my voice ground out. Everyone knew what this was doing to me but nobody would ask. And Jack wasn't here to read my mind. Although I was pretty sure he would be in short order.

"We understand, DanielJackson," Teal'c nodded. "ValaMalDoran will be greatly missed."

I nodded, trying to keep the tears I felt surfacing from revealing themselves in front of them. They had barely filed out of the room when I couldn't hold it back anymore.

My eyes opened to the dim light of a bedside lamp and the soft bedding surrounding me. I was tucked into a bed, but it wasn't mine. I hadn't bothered to improve on the standard issue bedding on the bed in my quarters.

"Daniel?" Vala's gentle voice spoke from the other side of the bed. I turned to face her where she was sitting against the headboard beside me. "Are you alright?"

I scoffed. "Alright? What does that mean these days?"

"Well, relatively speaking," she elaborated as I sat up on the bed, leaning against the headboard beside her.

I looked over my shoulder at her to find that our faces were now alarmingly close. "No."

"What happened?" She asked, her voice a whisper, now well aware of the constant drumming headache that got stronger with every vision. She ran a hand through my hair and over my cheek and my brain flashed over to when we were waiting backstage and she had done the same.

But that wasn't real. I knew because Vala was looking at me and talking to me, not dead in my arms. And I liked this reality better, so it had to be the real one, right?

Or I was tricking myself into believing that it was the real world so I didn't have to face the fact that Vala was dead.

A tear tracked down my cheek against my will.

"Daniel," she wiped at the tear. "What are you doing here?"

"What?"

"Cameron said you were looking for me, but when I came here you were unconscious on my bed. So, what happened?"

She was gazing at me with very concerned eyes. I turned to face her a little more fully and she did the same.

"I had a really bad one. A really bad vision. It scared the hell out of me."

She nodded. "Cameron said something about everybody dying."

"Yeah," I nodded, placing my hands on her shoulders, the panic rising within me again. "I had to come here…I had to make sure you were alright. I couldn't remember which was real. I needed to make sure you were still here. "

"I'm fine," Vala smiled weakly. "I mean, as fine as I can be."

"Considering?" I asked, narrowing my eyes and examining her, looking for any signs that she was ill.

She shook her head and almost knocked me upside mine, but her hand stopped just short. "Right, headache. Hitting you in the head would just be too mean. Even if you deserve it."

I continued to stare at her, puzzled. Had I forgotten something I was supposed to know?

"I'm worried about you, you idiot," she grumbled. "How could you not know that?"

Realization washed over me, like the feeling of walking into the warm sun, fresh out of the 'Gate. Of course she was. She had risked her life for mine countless times, her first thought was always of me. I closed my eyes and let a small smile make its way across my face, even as she stared on completely bewildered by my strange behavior.

"You know, I always thought I was a silly game to you. I always thought you were going to use me up and throw me away."

Her expression twisted to anger very quickly and I had to speed my words up before she actually did hit me in the head.

"Stop, wait, let me finish," I rushed. "I always knew how good a person you were. I could see through your badass act from the beginning. That's why you always exasperated me when you played it up. But I guess I always thought, from the way things had started off between us, that though we were friends, if I had…ever…let on to any real feelings for you, you would laugh. Mock me. Think I was crazy. Tell me that this strange thing between us was only ever meant to be some wacky flirtation and not real. And I would be…broken."

She shifted uncomfortably but held my gaze. I reached out and stroked her cheek, lovingly. "But that's not who you are or how you feel at all, is it? And I was always too scared to move on, or simply unable to believe that I ever could, to see you clearly. How could I miss this?"

Her eyes filled with tears, but she managed to hold them from spilling over onto her cheeks. "I don't know. Did it never occur to you that when Athena had taken me that you were the only person who could bring me home? The only person that made me remember? How could you miss how much I love you?"

I shook my head, overwhelmed by her admission. "You do, don't you? And I just woke up from a vision in which everyone but Jack and I died a horrible death, and all I could think to do when I woke up was to get to you so I could see you, so I could feel that you were still warm and alive." With every word I had spoken I had moved closer to her until our noses were bumping and our lips were a mere centimeters away from each other. "So I could have the chance to tell you how much I loved you before it was too late, before I missed my chance. I love you so much." By that point my words had begun to smell of desperation and when our lips finally crashed together it was passionate and powerful and I found myself quickly pulling her body against mine as my tasting of her deepened into a complete exploration of her mouth with my tongue.

I was caught up with all of the feelings and emotions that came in a rush from kissing Vala. Exhilaration, lust, love…so much love…and relief. Every time her tongue tangled with mine, I was another step closer to actually believing that she was alive in my arms. I pulled her closer to me, tipped us back onto the bed, pulling her on top of me as I did.

The minute we hit the bed together, she pulled back, dislodging herself from my arms, which had had her locked in a rather crushing embrace I hadn't intended on.

She sat up against the headboard again, her legs clasped almost cartoonishly together, her hands holding them together so tightly I almost rolled my eyes. "I-I-I can't do this."

I sat back up again to face her, my heart dropping to the pit of my stomach. For a moment I foolishly wondered if she had actually been playing with me like I had always believed. "What? What do you mean?"

"I can't be with you," Vala shook her head. "I love you very much, Daniel. Enough that if you were to get better from whatever that device is doing to you, if you were to get through this and decide that any feelings you had for me were based on the visions you were having, I honestly couldn't take it. Consummating any relationship between us would only make things worse for me." She let her legs drop to the side and began picking lint from her clothes. "I'm sorry. I know it's not your fault. I know you came here looking for something and I'm very sorry I can't provide it."

Her explanation floored me. I felt my throat go dry and I struggled to speak through the lump in my throat. "Oh God Vala, you've already given me everything I need." And then, the reality of this situation hit me. This was only going to get worse. For me and for her. And she was willing to stand by me. She was willing to make sure I was ok no matter what it meant for her.

Tears started to build yet again. I reached out to cup her face in my hand. "I know you can't let yourself believe me, but I want you to know – the love I have for you existed long before I started these visions. My fear of that love was one of the reasons I was trying to run. I'm not going to leave you now. I promise. We are in this together. Till the bitter end. Unless you don't want to be."

"How could I ever not want to be?" She shook her head, rolling her eyes a little. "Now Daniel," she said, running her hands sweetly through my hair in an attempt to calm me, "tell me about this vision you had."

The images from the morning's first vision rushed to my mind. I felt the sorrow I felt watching my friends picked off one by one. I felt the horror of feeling Vala die in my arms. And the happiness, before any of the shooting started, at the start of my new relationship with her.

"It doesn't matter," I said, struggling to keep the tears in as another overwhelming wave of emotions struck me. My God, I was really losing my mind. My words quickly spiraled out of control. "It doesn't matter because we changed it. Before you died, you told me you loved me for the first time, but you've already said it. You've already said it so it won't be the first time? Right Vala? There's no way that could really be my reality, right?"

By the time the words were out, the tears were streaming down my cheeks in torrents. Before I knew what was happening, Vala had me laying across her lap as she stroked my hair, whispered only good things and told me that I was right, there was no way that could be real, there was no way because she was there, telling me she loved me right now.

As I drifted off to sleep it was with fear that another vision was coming or worse, that I would wake up and this would be a vision, that none of the love and support I was getting from Vala here was ever actually real.


	7. Dreaming in the Waking World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is going to be a tad confusing, so bear with me. You might have a 'wait a minute' moment, but I guarantee, there were no typos in here, so just hang on for the ride. ;)

The briefing table. Again. How many times had I sat at this table? When I thought about it, it felt like billions of times. Of the realities I'd lived through where I had actually joined the SGC, each probably involved thousands of times of me sitting at this table. This was the first time I could think of that I had sat at this table as Vala's hand gripped mine underneath it.

It had only been the night before that I had confessed my love to her but it felt like a lifetime. The confession had managed to bring a more serene lifetime into focus, one of the rare ones in which I understood what was happening and when we stumbled on Vala's homeworld early in my travels with the SGC, I found an innocent Vala, untouched by Quetesh, living a simple life as a wife to the man she had been betrothed to before the demon had taken her. They had children. A life – a relatively normal one. It had been oddly comforting. Despite the fact that I would never be with her, despite the fact that I lived out the rest of my life buried in books and, eventually on Atlantis, it was a good vision because all of the torture that Quetesh had brought to her life and all the changes it had made to who she was had never happened there.

If it was even possible, seeing her at her most innocent, a loving wife and mother who took us in when we came to town, put us up in her home and cared for me when my allergies raged out of control thanks to a local flower, made me love her even more – even if I couldn't show her that until I came back to the reality I was currently in now.

I wanted to say 'my reality' but I wasn't really sure that was the case anymore. With every day that passed, they all felt just as real as this one.

All concerned eyes at the table were focused on me, as I bounced my leg twitchily under the table.

"Wouldja stop that Daniel?" Jack finally piped up. "You're making everybody nervous."

"They weren't nervous already?" I asked with humor. Everybody had been vibrating with nervous energy before they had even sat down to this meeting. I was simply the only person expressing it.

"Alright," Landry called the meeting to order. "What new information do we have?"

"There is some good news and I'm going to keep it simple because I know Daniel has enough flying around in his head without my mumbo jumbo adding to it," Sam smiled at me.

"Is that all we need?" Mitchell teased, "Sign me up for some alternate realities if it saves me from some Sam speak!" He winked at her and Jack glared at him.

I knew Cam was just joking. I knew he was nervously trying to lighten the mood. I still couldn't help my nasty response to that statement. "Right. Does this look like fun to you?" I snapped through gritted teeth, only to feel Vala pinch the back of my hand. "Ow!" I grabbed my hand from hers, effectively blowing our attempt at being covert about the handholding. "Quit it!"

"Daniel!" She scolded, looking around the table. I followed her gaze and observed the faces of everyone in the room that were staring at us, waiting for an explanation. A small smile played across Teal'c lips.

"What?" I asked, challenging anyone to question me. I was not in the mood. I took her hand in mine again, this time putting it on top of the briefing table for everyone to see.

"Anyway," Sam sighed, her eyebrows rising all the way up her forehead as she questioned me with her eyes. "I've got a handle on an energy frequency that is emitting from the device and is locked onto Daniel's energy signature. If I can just find a way to produce a negating frequency to that one I should be able to…" She took in the blank faces of everyone watching her.

"Think of noise cancelling headphones," Vala helped, clearly the only person with any patience left. I looked to her and smiled. The closeness we had established the night before seemed to have done wonders for her rejuvenation. I on the other hand took comfort in her presence whenever I could get it. In whatever timeline.

"Right. Those work by emitting a sound wave that mimics the incoming noise 180 degrees out of phase with the intruding sound wave, thus cancelling out the sound altogether. We will be creating a cancelling energy signature that we will broadcast in order to block the signal emitting from ever reaching Daniel. Then we can shut off the device and remove the energy crystals powering it."

"Why can we not simply remove the crystals immediately?" Teal'c asked, shaking his head.

"We tried that once before. The device reacts. The minute we get close to the crystals, the device emits a stronger frequency with higher compressions and lower rarefactions. And that has a resulting effect on Daniel's visions," Sam admitted with a grimace.

"What? When?" I asked.

"When we tried to simply remove the crystals last week, you woke up in the lab and claimed you were aware in your visions," Sam nodded. "The fluctuations jumped while I was trying to unlock the crystals and free them from the device."

"That's right. One of my translation implied that if we remove them in the wrong order or shut down the device in the wrong way, we may risk the chance of me being stuck in a vision and unable to rouse myself out of it. I'd be trapped in the alternate timeline." I explained. "I haven't, however, gotten to the part of the translation that explains what the right order is." I tilted my head and shrugged.

"Of course not," Landry shook his head.

"That's why I'd rather be sure Daniel's visions stop before I disable it. If I can manage that we won't risk the same mistake twice. Ever since we tried to remove those crystals the fluctuations have remained somewhat higher. Unfortunately, my fiddling with the device has probably increased the intensity and number of the timelines he is accessing. Or at least there is a direct correlation between the two."

"We caused this?" Vala asked, clearly alarmed by the idea. I was on the same exact page.

"We exacerbated an existing problem," Sam corrected. "The fluctuations were rising at a constant rate, meaning we would have gotten to the extreme level Daniel has been at eventually. Just not as soon. Sorry."

"You couldn't have known Sam," I nodded. "So it's only a matter of time now, right?" I was hoping that it was a matter of a short time. A short time would be good.

"Yes," Sam nodded. "But I can't say how long it will take. It may take a couple of hours. It may take a couple of days. I'm on the right track and will be working through the night to match up the energy signatures. If it works, you will stop getting the visions. Once they stop, I can pull out the crystals thus cutting off the connection entirely."

"And then Daniel will be fine?" Jack asked, his eyes narrowed. He didn't seem to believe it. I wasn't so sure I bought it either.

"Not necessarily," Sam frowned. I gulped. Vala squeezed my hand.

"What he has seen cannot be unseen," Teal'c nodded in understanding, clearly speaking from experience. "What he has already experienced and whatever effect that has had on him will remain. And he will be the only person who can ever truly understand his predicament. It is a similar situation to myself and the Odyssey."

" 'Cept Jackson has a million lives running around in his head," Mitchell sighed, his brow furrowing. "Not just the one."

Six heavy sighs filled the room.

"Hey guys," I smiled, trying to lighten the mood despite my concern. "I'll be fine. I've been a little crazy before. I'll sort it out." I looked to Vala. She didn't look so sure. I wasn't really so sure either. "I'll sort it out," I said again, more firmly, just for her.

Sam's lab…again. I stared at the artifact with disdain. Really, what had made me touch this thing? After all this time, I was still the naïve, foolish child I had been when I started this job.

"Don't do it," Vala settled down beside me, a stern look on her face. I didn't even bother asking her what she was talking about – simply turned my head to face her and waited for her to read my mind. "Don't beat yourself up about touching that thing. What is done cannot be undone."

I smiled at her and sighed, shaking my head. I couldn't believe her. She drove me nuts 98% of the time and somehow I couldn't stop thinking how lucky I was to have her.

"Any new breakthroughs on the translation?" She asked. Sam was tinkering with a laptop working on the frequency issue. Jack, Teal'c and Mitchell were hanging out on the couch, unsure of how to help, but unwilling to leave my side either. I had gotten lucky with all of them too.

The vague memory of what my life was like before I ever met them flashed through my mind and I couldn't help but smile. After the death of my parents, most of those memories were either not good or uneventful. There were bright spots, like Professor Jordan, Steven, Sarah and Share, but my University friends hadn't supported me through my stranger hunches and even Share had never fully understood me on the grander level despite the fact that she understood me on a different, more intimate level. My curiosity had always frightened her.

Sitting here, knowing I was going insane, and yet watching my friends rally around me determined to find an answer, always loving me no matter what foolish theory I came up with, no matter how short-sighted and temperamental I could sometimes be, I found that the artifact was getting blurred by my tears. I hid them well and almost nobody noticed.

Almost nobody.

"I don't care if you are drooling in a cup at the end of this. I will be holding that cup. Understood?" Vala whispered in my ear, rubbing my back comfortingly.

I leaned to whisper in her ear, my voice cracking as I spoke. "I know. That's why the tears."

She smiled, and I returned to my work, but as I stared on, the words slowly ceased to make sense. Frustrated, I walked away from the artifact. "This doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't? It was all making sense to you a moment ago?" Sarah asked, leaning on my shoulder and looking at the words with me.

"It was?" I grumbled, looking around for the canteen I had left on the ground beside me, cushioned on my pack. "Sarah, where's my water?"

She eyed me strangely. "Do you want water Daniel?"

I heard one of the grad students react. "Sarah? Did he just call you Sarah?"

Sarah seemed to take huge gulps of air and suddenly I felt as though I may have personally insulted her in some way. I couldn't imagine how. I tilted my head and examined her. She was frowning pretty hard. "I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong?"

"Who is Sarah?" She asked the grad student.

"Daniel's ex," she answered. "She was host to Osiris."

Sarah stared back at me and then seemed to nod to herself as though she finally understood something. "He's in the middle of one right now. He just slipped into a vision and he's filling in the roles."

The words made no sense to me and lit a panic that spread like a gasoline fire. "What? What is everyone talking about? Sarah?"

She smiled patiently at me, but it felt forced. "Don't worry about it. Come on, I think it's time for you to take a break."

"I don't need a break," I said, turning back towards the artifact. "I'm going to crack this thing."

"Not now you aren't," she argued. "Not with that pounding headache I know you are having right now. Let's grab a seat."

I grimaced at the mention of it. "My head does hurt."

She nodded. "Yes, come on sit down. That artifact isn't going anywhere."

"Fine," I walked off of the dig site and a little further out, leading her over to our camp. When we settled down on the floor outside of our tent, I stripped my glasses from my eyes, squinting and rubbing at the bridge of my nose. The sun was beating down on my shoulders, sweat sheeting down my back.

"It's especially hot today, desert or no," I complained, pulling at the collar of my t-shirt.

Sarah still had that concerned look on her face. "I'm not hot."

That amazed me. Her strawberry blonde curls cascaded down either side of her face. "You should tie your hair up. You're going to make yourself sick…and take off that jacket."

Sarah complied and then we sat in silence. "Why are you so worried about me?"

She looked around a little, most especially at a group of local workers who were seated not far from us, and seemed to be paying far too much attention. "You…just aren't behaving like yourself."

I sighed. I knew what this was about. "Look, I'm sorry I pushed so hard this morning about Mom and Dad coming to help us on this dig. It just…well, I thought maybe archaeology was going to end up being a family business. And ever since our thoughts turned to having a baby…I just…we haven't seen them since the wedding. I miss them."

"Alright darling," she answered. It was an odd endearment coming from her, one she didn't normally use. She stroked a hand through my hair and leaned my head to rest on her shoulder. "Of course we should see your parents. You don't see nearly enough of them." She shot what seemed to be a meaningful glance at one of the local workers and I was just about to ask what that was about when a spiking pain stabbed through my head, causing me to cry out in pain and grasp it in my hands.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Vala's voice broke through the pain and I looked to her as soon as it dulled for a minute, rubbing my eyes and trying to focus.

"Yeah," I choked out, grabbing the glass of water that seemingly appeared at my side. I took a sip before speaking again. "What was I saying?"

She sighed, "You were talking about the wedding."

"Right!" I smiled, glad she had gotten me back on track. "We're running out of time, you know. I mean, you were the one who wanted to plan it and you were the one who wanted to wear the mermaid-style dress that you need to be no more than two pounds to fit into and you have to know that if you wait much longer, you're going to have to cut a hole in it for your baby bump."

"I thought we were already married," Vala frowned as though she were trying to keep the whole thing straight in her head.

I laughed. "Very funny Val, but Kormak bracelets and Harrid and Salis don't count."

Vala's jaw dropped.

"He's in a different one now," Sam said from the other corner of the room and I found myself shocked that I hadn't heard her enter.

"Sam!" I jumped to my feet and walked over to her, narrowly avoiding the coffee table in the process. "What kind of best friend are you? Can you please get on her behind about planning the wedding? She's finding the whole process overwhelming, but you and Jack did it all so recently, you've got to have some ideas you can hand off to her."

"What?" I heard Jack say and turned to find him standing by the backdoor of the cabin with Cam, Teal'c and Jonas in tow. "Weddi-what?"

Oddly, Sam blushed and ducked her head.

"What are you two so worked up about," Vala rolled her eyes. "Obviously he isn't being serious. You two aren't in a relationship, are you?"

"Well…" Jack trailed off, looking from the guys and back to Vala and me. As if I didn't already know. Vala was acting very strange.

"Anyway Sam, please take her out to start picking things out now," I begged, just wanting to get the whole thing over with. I wasn't much for all of the decorations and madness that surrounded weddings, and I just wanted to skip it all and get to the marriage. There was enough planning to do with the baby. "I would do it, but she says she wants to do it herself. That it's a traditional Earth woman thing."

"Um…Daniel," Sam looked from me to Vala as if trying to think up an excuse. "I've been kinda busy lately."

"Hannah not sleeping through the night yet?" I asked, sympathetically and also in a bit of an attempt to fish for information. I was going to have to figure out how this whole parenting thing worked sooner or later and I just loved the pointers I got from Jack and Sam about their little girl.

"Hannah?" She asked, her face dumbfounded.

"Pretty name," Jack chuckled. Sam avoided his gaze.

"Sure, a year ago when you guys chose it," I responded, exasperated. What was wrong with everyone anyway? They were all acting so strangely .

"Sam?" I tried again.

"Fine, I'll help," she answered, her brows furrowing as she was clearly getting frustrated with me. "Vala, come over here with me. Daniel, sometimes your hyperactivity is less endearing then others."

"Thank you," I mouthed to her before shouting back at the guys. "Cam, Teal'c Jonas – do you think you guys can fire up the grill for Jack? I need to talk to him for a minute."

"Sure thing," Jonas responded, enthusiastic as always.

"Jonas?" Jack asked and I instantly knew why.

"Don't worry, Cam will teach him. He won't break your grill," I promised, leading him out onto the porch. Once we were outside, I took a deep breath, accidentally inhaling a great deal of the tree pollen floating through the air and letting out a huge, body rattling sneeze.

"Bless you Daniel," Jack answered by rote.

"Thanks," I grinned, itching my nose a little. "Allergies." I motioned to the trees.

He gave me his normal look. The one that told me he thought I was an oddball. I was used to it.

"You know, with the wedding coming up, Vala's not the only one with responsibilities she's not holding up. I was supposed to do this weeks ago and still haven't. So," I cleared my throat. "Um…you know we've always been – I mean you and I we're – I mean you're probably the best – um…"

"Ahhh Daniel," Jack teased, "usually so eloquent and yet sometimes, so not."

I shot him a glance through angrily slit eyes. "Best Man?"

"You betcha," he answered before all the words were out. "Whenever you need it."

I laughed. "Good." Then, as another pain lanced through my skull, I hissed air in between my teeth, pressing my palm to my forehead.

"Daniel?" Jack asked, worriedly.

"I'm fine," I answered before I had even truly caught my breath. "Look, I know you're upset about Sam ending up with Cam, but you missed your chance. You can't keep treating him like he's an outsider. He's a good man. And if you didn't want it to happen, you should have said something sooner. Now, I'm sorry if that upsets you but you really have to face reality here. Sam is over you and you have to let her move on."

I knew I probably shouldn't have said that. It wasn't like me to meddle in Jack's affairs, but could I really let it go on? Cam was my friend too, and Jack's behavior simply wasn't fair.

Jack stared at me for a good ten seconds before grasping me by my arm and hauling me back inside the cabin. "I'm tagging somebody else in."

"I lasted much longer than you," Vala teased, her accent and the purr she said the words with definitely designed to send all possible meanings of the entendre floating through the brains of anyone listening. Because despite how much she had tamed, there was still a sexual deviant lurking behind those pretty grey eyes.

But at least she was my sexual deviant. I leaned up against her side, pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek. "I missed you." I turned her to face me more fully and moved to take her lips with my own.

She pulled her head back. "Darling, you aren't generally open to these kinds of public displays of affection."

I pulled her body fully against mine. "Yeah well, you're pregnant, it's not like they don't know what we've been doing."

"Whoa there Princess! No taking advantage," I heard Cam yell from the other side of the room, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

"No worries Cameron," Vala said, kissing me softly on the lips, but going no further. "Nothing more than we've done in real time, I promise."

The spike of pain traveled through my head once again, and I dropped my head to Vala's shoulder, bringing it up to look into Sha're's chocolate brown eyes. "Listen," I told her soothingly. "I know you're scared, but I need you to come back to Earth with me, just until I can help Jack and his team figure this thing out. And if it takes awhile we can come back to Abydos to visit as much as you want, I promise."

Sha're's face fell. "And now I'm out. I need a minute," she proclaimed, tearfully. She walked away, her body pulling from mine so fast that I tripped and when I regained my balance, watched the retreating form of Vala as she sped out of the room.

"Vala?" I called, rushing after her, desperation spreading through me. I had no idea what I had done, but I was confused, I wasn't quite sure where I was right now and all I knew was that she was angry. And she was leaving me. "Vala, please wait."

She turned and walked back into Sam's lab, brushing quickly at the tears in her eyes. "What Daniel? I was coming right back."

"I'm in Sam's lab, right?" I asked. "I had visions. I don't remember falling asleep." I sunk down the wall I was leaning against, feeling my expression go lax as I stared out at the far wall. "I don't remember falling asleep."

"You did not DanielJackson," Teal'c explained, his voice quiet and gentle. "It would seem you were experiencing your visions while still awake and interacting with us."

"Oh God," I sighed, shaking my head where I now held it in my hands. And then realization dawned. "Oh God." I raised my head up and looked at Vala, looked at her fighting off tears with stoic sadness, looking like I had just forced her to live out her worst nightmare. "I'm so sorry, I was disoriented and I didn't know. I didn't understand what was happening."

Vala nodded, but still looked worse for the wear. I looked around the room, suddenly plucking out the inconsistencies in each vision. One jumped out with alarming clarity. "Jack, Sam?"

"Don't ask," they answered in unison. Then Sam continued on, "I just about caught up with the fluctuations and then they spiked in a whole different pattern – most likely evidence of your latest tendency. But I'm almost there Daniel, if you can just hold out a little longer."

I slammed my head back hard against the wall, sending shots of pain through the back of my skull and around to the front where they mingled with all of the tiny nails being driven into my forehead and behind my eyes. "Of course I can hold out a little longer. Somebody help me up?" I asked.

Jack reached out and hauled me to my feet, clapping me on my back as he did. "Hang in there," he said. "Sam is gonna fix this. If anyone can…"

"I know," I nodded.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you," he added before stepping away. "We haven't even figured out what we're doing yet."

"I get that," I nodded, looking from him to Vala.

"You figure out what you're doing there yet?" He asked, jutting his chin out in Vala's direction.

"Loving her and figuring out the specifics later," I answered, never taking my eyes off of her, where she was leaning up against the table, still looking shell-shocked and a little pale.

"I wish I'd started there," Jack grumbled. "Woulda saved me years of trouble."

I chuckled lightly and headed over to Vala, where she stood, still trying to figure out the artifact. When I stopped beside her, she didn't look up from the text.

"I believe this is the part about the order of crystals to remove. I've seen this word many times in our more technical Alteran work," she explained.

I leaned over her shoulder to confirm her findings. "Yes, that's the word for crystals," I beamed with pride. "Very good."

"We should start translating that part then," she responded curtly.

"Agreed but one thing first," I said, resting my chin on her shoulder and wrapping my arms around her waist.

"What?" she said, dismissively, but I caught it, her body sinking into mine a little. Thank God.

"You still holding that cup for me while I drool, Vala?" I asked, making sure I said her name, making sure she knew I knew who I was talking to before I completely destroyed what we had begun to build.

She looked up over her shoulder at me, and the ice in her eyes melted. "Of course, Daniel. Always."

I shook my head at the absurdity of our situation. "Good. Then let's get to work."


	8. Solutions and Psych Evaluations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More confusion coming. But by now, you've probably gotten the hang of navigating the mess that is Daniel's brain.

Staring out at the crowd surrounding me, I tried to think of the right thing to say. But what did you say to a group of revolutionaries, young Egyptian men, ready to revolt against the only God they had ever known, Ra? My training at the SGC had not prepared me for this. Jack, Sam and Teal'c had tried this before and failed. But now, after years of being alone here, we had a decent underground movement going and we had a shot. But what could I say to these men who were about to risk their lives for this cause?

I took a deep breath and spoke to them. "Gentlemen, now is the time for us to step forward! To make a change! It may seem scary to you, but Ra is not your God. The proof is evident in the very fact that he does not have a hint of what we have been plotting here. If he had, would he allow it to continue? If this was truly heresy, how could we be continuing to conduct it under his very nose? The time has come for us to take back this world. To keep Ra from shuttling our brothers and sisters to other worlds, to keep Ra from murdering those who do not bow before him. We will make him bow before us. Let us fight! And if we should die today then it will be a noble death!"

"Yes, that's a very nice speech. Very inspirational," Jack grumbled, from his seat next to were I was standing on the couch.

"What? What did I say?" I asked, long since frustrated with my constant shuffling through visions and even more frustrated with my new tendency to live out random parts of them in front of my friends.

"I have no damn idea," Jack shrugged. "It sounded very inspirational, but I had trouble understanding it since it was in another damn language!"

"Great," I let out a long, loud and obnoxious sigh as I climbed down from the couch and plopped down between Jack and Teal'c. "How long have I been in Ancient Egypt?"

"Approximately one hour," Teal'c answered, looking over at me and eyeing me with worry.

This had been happening to me for the last day or so, and I had given up on trying to translate anything anymore. Vala was working with little bits of my occasional input to try and use what she had learned over the last few years to translate the text, but I had long ago decided that there was no point in my trying. My input actually tended to make the translation more difficult as sometimes, Vala was asking me questions about one text and I was answering questions about an entirely different one that I was seeing in a vision. After a while, Vala decided to take over the whole project. I was only to instruct after a full quiz on where I was, who she was and what she was doing.

I didn't even know why I was in the room, but I figured the reasons were mainly to remind Sam and Vala of why they weren't sleeping. As though they really needed such a reminder.

I certainly wasn't there based on how helpful I was being.

This was ridiculous. I was useless. A disgusting shell of who I once was. And I would never be anything more if I didn't get myself placed on this mission. And Sam too, of course. Sam and I were a team. And I was really tired of teaching English as a Second Language.

"Look, the only reason you have the Stargate is because of us!" I grumbled at General Hammond.

"We all know that DanielJackson," Hammond shook his head, impatiently.

"I'm a linguist. By all accounts, your team may need one," I pointed out. I needed to remind him of why I was an essential gamble to make. Even if I was very likely going to get myself killed with this hare-brained scheme.

I looked to Sam to come up with her own reason for leaving. She was alarmingly engrossed in something else and didn't even seem to be paying attention to me at all! It looked as though I would have to make her case for her.

"Uh….And what if something goes wrong with the gate on the other end? You'll need Sam!"

"I am unsure of what answer you are looking for," Hammond replied, his gaze skeptical.

"Can I at least ask who is going?" I asked, just in time to see the elevator doors open, revealing Jack O'Neill.

"Great," I sighed. "Colonel O'Neill." I held out my hand for him to shake it. He scowled at me and ignored the gesture. I dropped my hand back to my side. "Fine. Never mind."

My head erupted in pain and I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes to suppress the feeling in any way I could think of. When I looked up, I was walking around in the lab again.

I sighed dramatically and looked around the room, frustrated. "What now?"

"You were talkin' to Teal'c, not Hammond. I don't have any idea what in the hell you were talking about, but you sounded…a little dorky…er." Mitchell's grin was more of a grimace.

"Mitchell," I shook my head, and settled in front of the artifact beside Vala. "Don't worry. We're going to stop these visions you're having. I'm almost there, just give me a little time."

The group exchanged a look I didn't understand before Sam cracked a smile.

"Catch me up," Sam urged. "What have you got from the translation?"

"Well," I answered, shooting a worried glance at Cameron, "this device was invented by the Alterans for the exact purposes it advertises – to help someone gain an understanding of their lives through an understanding of other lives they could have lived. However, the device has to be activated in a particular way in order to initiate properly. Once initiated improperly, the only way to stop the thing is to disable the crystals in the right order and to manipulate the signal properly. This religious cult, desperate to catch up with their more evolved brethren, abused the device by jacking up the signal, like what we inadvertently did to Mitchell when we tried to remove the crystals the first time. They purposely ramped things up to try to reach Ascension sooner. And it drove them insane. It made them kill themselves."

I looked to Cameron, who looked disturbed. The poor man. This must be horrible for him. Having all of those conflicting thoughts bounding around in his head, colliding and rebounding off of each other. He was so confused. Without anything to anchor him down to his true world, he was floating blindly within a matter of a week. He probably wasn't far from the bodies in the temple. At this point he was surviving by pure will. I was grateful that he was so stubborn. It gave us time to try to save him.

"Did your readings assist you in uncovering the ideal way to halt the device's activity with minimal effects to…ColonelMitchell?" Teal'c asked, shooting a sideways glance his way.

"This is ridiculous," Mitchell growled. "Can't we just tell him?"

I frowned. It was clear what was wrong here. "Mitchell, are you having that vision where I'm the one affected by the device again?"

"Oh, you mean reality," Mitchell scrubbed his hands across his face. "Answer the question, Jackson."

"Well, the bottom line is, this would have been best if The New Guy just hadn't touched anything to begin with, But I do have a rough translation of what order the crystals should be removed in. Here, let me write down the order for you."

I scribbled the combination on the pad as quickly as possible and handed it off to Sam.

"Perfect," Sam rushed to adjust some readings on her computer. "I'm close to cracking the signal issue. Once I do, I can start this sequence."

"Nice break," Mitchell laughed. "We may just save you yet Jackson!"

Vala laughed, but it wasn't a laugh full of mirth, but relief. She bumped Mitchell with her shoulder. I looked at the desk, not terribly comfortable with their contact. I pretended to examine the artifact.

"Tell me Daniel," Mitchell teased, unusual behavior for him in his current state, "why is it so easy for you to believe that I am having a vision that you are having visions, but you can't believe the possibility that it went down the other way around?"

I fixed him with a look fitting the ridiculousness of the question. "Because there is no way I would have been stupid enough to touch the artifact."

Mitchell sputtered out a laugh and was joined by a chorus of laughter from the others that I didn't understand.

I averted my eyes from their gaze, sitting down on the stool. Grimacing against the ever annoying, sometimes spiking and continuously present pain in my head, I rubbed my eyes and the bridge of my nose before looking back up at Sam, Jack and Teal'c.

"I say we don't try saving her at all," I argued quietly, my voice clearly a shock to the rest of my team. I knew they would never expect me to argue this, would never expect me to ever say we shouldn't save someone. But in this case, I had my reasons.

"What? Who?" Jack asked, seemingly very intrigued by my statement. "Who shouldn't we try to save?" He looked to Sam and Teal'c and a couple of other random places in the room.

"This girl. Really, what are we going to do about her?" I answered, my voice bitter and cold. "Her father is clearly an unstable wreck. His wife sold his daughter off to be a host to a Goa'uld. And we want to run a rescue mission, remove the symbiote from her and deliver her back into the waiting arms of that family? For what?"

"Remove the symbiote?" Sam asked through the strange silence that permeated the room around them. She stopped all work and looked at him. "You mean we are going to rescue the girl and bring her to the To'kra?"

My face twisted in confusion. "Why would we do that? We all know they have their own agenda. Who knows what they would do to the girl if we brought her to them? They would probably make her take a symbiote of their own. That wouldn't be freedom, that would be buying somebody free from slavery just to sell them back in. No, we're going to use our base technology to do it."

"What's so wrong with that?" Jack asked tentatively. "If we have a way to free people from the Goa'uld, why wouldn't you want to use it?"

I scoffed at the question. Jack was being ridiculous. "Seriously? You of all people are going to ask me that? The technology is faulty. You saw what it did to Sha're – and she had a stable family."

"Sha're returned to you?" Teal'c asked.

"Yes, for two short years of insanity before she ended it all because she couldn't take it anymore." I barked, reliving the day I'd found her, hanging in our living room.

"Daniel, that wouldn't be the technology," Sam reasoned, her voice soft, walking on eggshells as they always did whenever Sha're came up. "That would be the trauma of what happened to her."

"Who cares why?" I shouted back. I was worked up into a righteous fury and I could feel every word my mouth spat out as if it was tangible. "I don't! It's clear that we're ill equipped to deal with the effects of being a host even for a short period of time. I took care of Sha're. I was with her all the time, comforting her, working through the problem. She had a team of doctors on her side. And she didn't make it. We couldn't save her. Who knows if any of the others were failures? We never kept track of them. All I know is this girl…all she's got is her father and I'm pretty sure from talking to him that he's a con artist. If Sha're couldn't make it, she won't. She'll suffer and then she'll die." I reached out, picking up the patient profile we had compiled. "I say we take this…" I looked for her name on the sheet of paper. "This…Vala Mal Doran, and we kill Quetesh and her. I say we put her out of her misery."

"Shit Daniel," Jack shook his head, his eyes desperately darting between my face and a cabinet to the left of me.

"Look," I huffed a breath out, hunching my shoulders over in defeat. "You do what you want. But I won't be a part of it." I threw the file back on the table and headed for the door.

My hands touched the door. I leaned my head against the cool metal. Turned. Looked back into the lab. And looked directly at the shocked faces of my friends.

I dropped back against the closed door, so weary of all of this. "I'm sorry," I whispered hoarsely. And it was true. I was. Horribly sorry that all of my friends were baring witness to this ugly thing I was enduring. Truly sorry for being such an eternal burden, just as I always had been, constantly getting myself into trouble. "I'm sorry. I need some space."

"Alright darling," Vala stepped forward, her voice sounding just as hoarse and tired as mine. She stepped closer to me and I could see the dark circles under her eyes, the paleness of her skin, the way her skin was drawn. She wasn't eating, wasn't sleeping. Because of me. "We'll go to your room. You can get some rest. We don't really need to translate anymore."

I reached out to her and cupped her neck in my hand. My head tilted, and I stared into her eyes with all of the adoration I felt for her written on my face. I couldn't help it. I was overwhelmed by it. Drowning in it. And that was why. "No. I'm going by myself."

"Absolutely not," she shouted, clearly overwrought from her exhaustion. So was I. She tossed my hand off of her and pushed me back into the door. "We made a deal. We had to watch you. We all said we would take care of you. You shouldn't be alone!"

"Please guys," I whispered, sliding down the door to sit on the floor. "Just give me fifteen minutes. Just fifteen minutes. Do you have any idea what this is like? Watching you guys watch me go insane? Knowing I'm hurting you all with some of the things I say? Do you have any idea what this is like? I'm going crazy and I can't get a moment's peace. Not a moment to myself to sort it out. Please, just fifteen minutes. Please?" I was disintegrating with every word until I was begging and pleading for my own freedom.

"Ok," Jack muttered. Everyone looked to him in shock. Even me. Even as I was begging I never expected him to grant me what I was asking.

"Jack," Vala jumped to her feet and stepped close to him until they were nearly face to face. "We are not doing this."

"We are," Jack answered. "He needs this. And you are not going to stop him."

She stepped away, but her eyes were alight with her internal fire.

I pulled myself up the door to my feet. "Thank you Jack."

"Mitchell, Teal'c, walk him to his room," Jack commanded. "No funny business." It sounded like a joke. It was a warning. Jack wasn't having any disobedience from me. Not today.

"Ok," I turned to Vala. "I'll be okay. I'm not going anywhere. See you in fifteen minutes. Please don't be mad at me."

"I'll be like this never happened, only if you come back safe and sound." She folded her arms across her chest, her eyes fixed angrily on me, her jaw set. And that was how I left her.

The walk down the hall was uneventful, but the moment I was behind closed doors I set to work. Rushing, I grabbed my journal and a pen. I knew where this was going. I knew where this would end now. And I had to be sure I took care of the things that needed to be said.

I wrote…and when I was done, I emerged, found Mitchell and Teal'c and had them lead me back to the office where the others waited. We walked through the doorway and I headed straight to Sam, looking over her shoulder to see the ship's sensors and ascertain the validity of Vala's claim.

"I know it sounds crazy," I nodded. "But I think she's right. Vala's right."

"Well, of course I'm right darling," she smiled, leaning against me, the length of her body stretched against my side, her arms wrapped around my neck. "What am I right about?"

I promptly removed her arms from my neck and shoved her back out of my personal space. "If we get to the Alkesh and use it to replace the last place in the link, we'll be able to keep the Supergate from forming."

"Yes," Sam nodded, not bothering to look up from her work. "She's certainly right about that."

"Let's go," I grabbed Vala's elbow, bouncing on my heels. "I'm assuming we're running out of time."

Vala looked up from my hand on her elbow, shocked. "You believed in me. You didn't ignore my ideas."

"Of course not," I shook my head. "You never tell the truth, but you're not stupid."

"Spectacular," she ripped her elbow from my hand. "I don't think you want to go with me on this one."

"Guys, I think I'm getting somewhere!" Sam cheered from her seat.

I leaned close to Vala and marched her towards the door, whispering as we walked. "You know…you know I…look, I can't let you go by yourself. I'll come with you. I mean, why not? " I grinned and she slowly began to return the smile. "We're stuck together anyway. I've gotten used to having you permanently attached to my side. What's a ride on an Alkesh?"

She brightened, and reached out to touch my face as I finished programming the rings and we stepped onto the ring platform. I smiled at the feel of her soft hands against my face, the exchange a well-worn gesture at this point. Her slate grey eyes searched mine carefully, as though trying to tear the full truth from me. I couldn't help myself. I had to tell her.

"And also," I admitted. "I couldn't let you do something so dangerous alone. Without me."

She swallowed hard. The pain was back and my eyes slammed shut. When they opened again, I was still staring into Vala's eyes and only the surroundings had changed. A bitter smile swept across my face. "The shame of it all is, I hadn't been paying attention. If I had I would have never let you go on that Alkesh alone. And then…maybe we would have had more time…."

"We will have more time Daniel," Vala cried, tears springing into her eyes. "We are not finished yet. Sam is almost done."

"Vala," I breathed, but the air I took in brought no relief. "Sam is dead. They're all dead. And we're almost gone too. "The planet is destroyed. The ship is destroyed. There is nothing on the Earth for us but rubble and here…the life support on this ship is nearly depleted. And we are out of time."

I struggled for air, unable to get anything of substance into my lungs. It was like I was a fish drowning in water, being pulled backwards so I couldn't get anything I needed inside.

"Val," I tried again, sliding to the floor. I knew I still had air. I would fall unconscious before I would die. But it felt like dying anyway, because I knew it was quickly approaching. I had things to say with my last few breaths. Important things. "Vala, I love you. I realized it far too late."

"I love you too Daniel," she slid to the floor next to me. She looked up, obviously beginning to hallucinate. "Sam, he's hyperventilating."

And then I heard her. Sam. And it was clear that I was hallucinating too. "Almost," she said urgently.

And then there was pain and for a moment I thought I may be dead. But I wasn't. I wasn't dead. Just very, very angry.

"You destroyed it, you bastard." I growled at Jack, pushing Shyla aside. "What am I supposed to do without my sarcophagus? I need it!"

I lunged at Jack, consumed by my anger, completely ignoring the way Shyla had hit the floor, hard. And then, something clicked.

This was a repeat. I'd done this one before.

Sam watched me. Stared back at me. "Daniel?"

"Are we ready to do this?" I asked.

"We've already done it. It's done. Are you okay?" I watched her look around to the others.

"I think I'd remember if we sent the message through. We have to go. The fate of Earth relies on us getting that message back so we never meet the Ashen."

The Ashen…this felt like déjà vu as well. Something was wrong.

I tried to focus on anything, to anchor myself to reality and suddenly the thought of Vala forced its way into my mind. And that was when I realized that I hadn't shoved Shyla. I had shoved Vala.

I dropped to my knees beside her. "What the hell did I do? I'm so sorry. I didn't know what I was doing."

Vala was rubbing her head, but she was sitting up again. She looked to me and her face revealed her weariness with this whole ordeal, even though she quickly replaced the look with bright eyes and a charming smile. "I'm fine Daniel. How are you feeling?"

"Not well," I shook my head. "The visions are starting to repeat. Which is crazy. I couldn't have made my way through all of the possibilities. How could I be repeating?"

"You're not Daniel," Sam stood, walking around the lab table and approaching me, surrounded by the others. Jack helped Vala to her feet.

"Daniel, I turned off the device 10 minutes ago," Sam frowned. "There is no signal emitting from that device anymore. There hasn't been for awhile.

My God. I was crazy. The words took a moment to fully sink in to the level where I could truly comprehend their meaning. I was insane. Completely. And I hadn't hurt Vala because I was trapped in a vision. I had hurt her because I was still reliving them, even though they weren't being force-fed to me anymore. I had hurt her like I probably would a million times if I continued this way.

The psychiatric evaluation was long and dull. I remembered a room like this. A white padded room. I remembered it all too well. Turning off the device hadn't helped. Turning off the device hadn't saved me. According to Dr. Hutchinson, I had compartmentalized my brain to deal with the problem. Every single Daniel had its own personality, it's own delusion. It would never change. I would likely be that way forever.

That's why when the orderlies came in to administer my medication, I channeled the worst of my experiences. All of the anger, all of the pain, all of the desire in my heart from over the last two weeks, and I attacked.

I made it through a few guards, stealing a zat and shooting anyone who came anywhere near me. But the zat wasn't enough. It wasn't what I needed.

I didn't find that until I finally made it to the armory.


	9. Down the Barrel

A gun is a very strange and powerful thing. Especially mine. My Beretta, my sidearm, something I've counted on for countless missions in countless lifetimes, something that had saved my life many times, would end it. It was hard to believe. And yet it wasn't. It had a certain poetry.

There were noises in the hallway outside of the armory, and they were trying to re-enable the door lock I had jammed. One of the perks of that one life, one of the ones I had experienced in the week after I had realized this was how it was going to end, where circumstances had forced Vala and I to survive by her way of life. It had been a disconcerting way to live, but it had taught me a few things.

I had needed to jam the lock. I needed time. For all the poetry dying by my sidearm had, there was something cold about a gunshot wound to the head. This wasn't the first time I had though of doing something like this. There was that one time on my balcony…and that time in that particular foster home…but jumping off of a ledge or loading up on as much prescription medication as I could possibly take were way more peaceful ways to go.

This was violent. Bloody. Immediate. This was not the way I would have wanted it if given the choice, but it was the only way I was going to stop my friends from stopping me.

And I needed to keep them away from this. Needed to do this before they got through that door. Because I knew they could stop me. It would be so much harder seeing their faces as I did it.

They wouldn't understand that I was trying to keep them from having to take care of me. That I was trying to keep them from watching me hurt myself…or them. It had been so hard to see Sarah fall apart after Osiris had been removed from her. It had been so hard to watch Sha're fall apart after Amaunet had been removed from her. It had been so hard to watch Mitchell go through what I was going through right now. That had ended very much the same way as this would. I knew how it would feel for them. It would hurt them. I was saving them pain.

I had come to a realization on a few things. And I had written them all in my journal. Someone would clean out my office. Someone would pick up my journal and read it…most likely Vala. Someone would find the suicide note I had written there.

Vala…shit, Vala! This was horrible, but she was already falling apart watching me for two weeks. The thought occurred to me that I was doing the same thing Sha're had done to me after two years of trying to become normal again. Instead of making me regret my decision, it only strengthened it. I now forgave Sha're for making that choice. I only hoped Vala would see this for what it was and what it was not. I would miss her. I would miss Jack. I would miss all of them. So much. I had no idea where I was going, no idea what I believed, or I believed everything – it really depended on which reality I was in at the time.

It was now or never. The pounds against the door were ever-increasing in volume and there was work being done to sever the engagement of the lock. I moved the gun up to my temple and mentally said goodbye to all of my friends, the cold barrel of the gun pressed there. My finger moved to the trigger and I prepared to pull. Strange how this was the most lucid I had been in two weeks.

"Don't move a muscle, Danny," Jack's voice sounded closer to me than I wanted to acknowledge. "Don't move a damned muscle." His voice was cold and low, which told me he was less my friend right now and more the soldier.

Despite all of Jack's whimsy and weirdness, he was still fairly predictable at times. I didn't even need to look up to know he had his gun trained on me as though that would solve anything at all.

The situation was tense. My insanity allowed me a smile as I turned to face him, the cold metal still pressed to my skull.

I was right. He was pointing a gun my way.

"Do you really think I want to see this, Daniel? Do you really thing I can frickin' see this?" Jack asked, and the coldness in his eyes told me what I had made him think of and it both hurt and soothed that little bit of me that had felt abandoned when he had left that seeing me with this gun to my head actually triggered in his mind any memory of Charlie.

Tears again. Always tears. I scoffed a little at his behavior, lost as to how to help him deal with this. "What are you going to do Jack? Shoot me?"

"Better me than you," he answered without a second's thought.

"Shooting me would be counterproductive," I answered, "and you know that. It's exactly what I want."

"What you want?" He spat as the others poured into the room behind him and around him. All looking horrified by the scene in front of them, even Teal'c and most especially Vala, who stood by Jack's side, her eyes imploring him to find a way to stop what I was doing. "How could you possibly even know what you want? You're in a million places at once!"

"Not in a million places," I corrected, feeling the need to make him understand the distinction clearly, feeling like maybe it would help him understand. "In one place, having a million experiences, a million lives, a million memories. They are here. I can't forget them. And they change my perspective on all of it when I can sort it out. So I'm wiser, when I can make sense of them, and when they overwhelm me I'm all the more insane."

"Daniel," he urged, that silent communication we were famous for telling me that he had no idea what I had just said and he didn't care. He just wanted me to lower the gun.

I wasn't completely sure I had any idea what I had just said.

"No. I have to do this," I answered simply. "You won't shoot me, so you won't stop me."

There was a moment where I thought I was actually going to succeed in this fool's quest of mine. And then she spoke.

"He won't, but I will," Vala called my attention. And then she did the stupidest, craziest thing I've ever seen her do in any reality…ok, that wasn't completely true. She pulled a gun and pressed it against Jack's head. "He won't shoot you, but I will shoot him."

"Vala!" Sam shouted.

"Princess, what the hell?"

"ValaMalDoran, what are you trying to accomplish with this?"

Jack's eyes simply ticked towards my raven-haired beauty, his expression taken over by one I actually couldn't read this time.

"Drop the gun now, Daniel," She commanded, her voice quivering and tight, and I felt perhaps I had finally pushed her to the edge. "Drop the gun or I will kill him and Sam will most certainly kill me, and there will be all sorts of bloody adventure here."

My jaw slackened, my grip on the gun loosened and for the first time since I'd come here my hands began to shake. This was the exact opposite of what I was trying to cause here, wasn't it? Would she really do something like this? I couldn't tell – I didn't know what a Vala in love with a suicidal Daniel would do to stop him…but I did know that she was a very determined woman, and if she wanted to stop me, she would.

"Y-y-you wouldn't," I tried, although I wasn't entirely sure that was a true statement.

"What exactly do you think I have to lose right now, Daniel?" She asked. Her voice cracked as she spoke and I knew she was serious. "Drop the gun now, or I'll make life very miserable for all of us whether you survive or not."

My eyes locked on hers. They were quivering with determination and fear. I lowered the gun to my side.

I knew I'd never be able to do this if I had to look them in the eye.

"Cameron take the gun," Vala commanded, flicking the wrist of the hand that was holding the gun she had aimed at Jack.

"Vala," Mitchell breathed.

"Now!"

He walked up to me and pulled the gun from my hand. "Never, ever do that again, buddy," he said, his hand clapping my shoulder hard. "There's never a reason for that." He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head before walking away.

"Muscles," Vala called. "Stand close to him. Be prepared to restrain him if necessary."

Teal'c nodded though his obvious frustration and walked to the other side of me without a word.

A small smile cracked across Vala's face then and she heaved a huge sigh of relief, lowering her gun immediately. "God, I wasn't sure that was going to work!" She laughed.

Jack and Sam shot her angry glances on either side of her. She looked between the two of them and rolled her eyes.

"What? I wasn't actually going to do it! Exactly who do you think I am?" Vala scoffed. "I just needed him to believe I would do it."

"Damn con artist," I muttered, shaking my head and lowering my eyes to the floor. She'd certainly had me fooled. I guess that's what I got for basing so much on someone who lied for a living. Of course I understood that her insane risk there had had everything to do with her need to keep me safe…and on one hand I appreciated it. Another, more twisted side of me did not.

"You could have fooled me Vala!" Sam shouted, clearly angry for having been put through the panic of a lifetime.

"For crying out loud, ya damn space pirate!" Jack grumbled. "I thought that might be the case, but…for a second…"

"P-p-p-poker face," Vala grinned, handing off her gun to Sam's waiting hand. "You can't read mine."

"You would be a Gaga fan," Jack rolled his eyes as though that was her worst offense of the day.

"Princess, you just got awfully giddy," Mitchell questioned as Sam walked to the wall phone and informed General Landry that everything was under control. "Is there something you aren't cluin' us in on?"

"Yes," she smiled, triumphantly. "I know how to save my Daniel!"

"What?" That caught my attention. "How?"

"Well, the doctors said that everything he is going through now is the result of the severe emotional and factual overload of the last two weeks, right?" Vala started, addressing the room and virtually ignoring me. "Now that the device is turned off and he isn't getting any new information, everything would be better if we could simply make these last two weeks go away."

"You're a damn genius Princess." Cam shook his head, a slow smile beginning to creep it's way across his face. Well, I guess he got it.

"ColonelCarter," Teal'c spoke up, "what would occur if DanielJackson's memory of the last two weeks were to somehow be…misplaced."

So Teal'c got it too. Sam was grinning from ear to ear. It looked like Jack and I were left alone in the dark – a rare combination.

"Does somebody want to give me a hint on what you're all thinking?" Jack shouted suddenly, making everyone in the room jump a little.

"We use the Galeran memory device," Sam cheered. "We effectively reset Daniel's memories so that none of this ever happened!"

It made sense. It was a great idea. A logical, well-thought plan from Vala. And it made her my hero on top of everything else, because I didn't feel like I could live with the pain in my head anymore, with the horrible nightmares repeating themselves over and over again in my mind. Even the well-lived lifetimes were difficult to live through, because they weren't this life, so they mucked up everything I was trying to do here.

She had found a way to restore me to who I had been before this mess, and yet, as my eyes met hers once again, I couldn't help but argue against her. I couldn't lose her. "The entire two weeks…would all be gone? Everything?"

Vala stepped towards me now, not bothering to try to hide anything from any of our friends…as though we hadn't already been more than obvious in the past. She tenderly took my face in her hands and pressed a kiss to my lips. When she pulled back she pressed her forehead against mine. "Ever since I realized that I loved you, I have dreamed that you would love me back. I never thought you could, so you can't imagine how overjoyed I was when you told me you loved me."

I took her hands in mine. I focused solely on her to anchor myself to this moment because I knew it was important.

"The idea," Vala continued, "that you would consider living in this nightmare because you're scared to lose what we've started is beyond that. The depths of your love has floored me. But we can't know what memories of me are connected to what has happened to you and I can't take the chance that knowing any of this will pull you back down. I can't take that risk."

I was overwhelmed by her words. She was talking about being floored by my sacrifices, but she had no idea what her sacrifice was doing to me. "So selfless," I teased through the lump in my throat, running my fingers through her hair gently. "Who knew?"

She laughed. "I love you."

"I love you," I said to her and our eyes met for a moment before both of us nodded our assurance to each other. I turned to the rest of the people in the room. "How do we do this?"

"We need to get the device from Area 51. I'll ready the machine. We should probably film something like we did with Vala, to make sure you know this was something you agreed to," Sam suggested. "You'll probably need a medical evaluation. And you probably need to prepare yourself personally for what you are about to do."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking from where Vala's hand squeezed mine to Vala and back to Sam. "There's that."

"Cam, head to Area 51to get the device," Sam asked. "Use the Hammond. I'll have them beam you up and beam you back down. I want to get started as soon as possible."

"On it!" Mitchell nodded, heading off through the door. "Damn good to have a plan again!"

I stifled a smile. It was true. I was almost starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Almost.

"Why don't you guys keep Daniel company in his quarters until I've caught General Landry and Dr. Lam up?" Sam suggested, heading for the door.

"Yes, make sure I'm not a danger to myself," I sighed.

"You should not say that as though you are not," Teal'c stated pointedly.

Vala and Jack smirked at that statement.

"Fair enough," I nodded, following Sam out of the door, flanked by Vala and Jack and followed closely by Teal'c.

"You're wonko, you know?" Jack told Vala.

"I know," she nodded.

"How did you even know where I was?" I asked Jack, "Not that I'm not grateful."

"You entered the wrong code into the armory keypad 5 times," he answered with a shrug.

"We figured it was because you couldn't figure out which reality's armory you were opening," Vala added.

"Yeah," I nodded, "IDC's would be a bitch."

"Splat!" Vala mimed walking into the iris with a laugh and I couldn't help but laugh in return.

"Good to see you smile, Danny boy," Jack tapped me on the back.

"Indeed," Teal'c added.

It was about an hour before Sam called me back into the room to record my video. At first, sitting in the room with Jack, Teal'c and Vala, I felt almost fine – almost like I could cope with this latest hiccup on the ridiculous roller coaster ride that was my life. And then, it started again. I started getting confused. I would find myself unsure of what the current situation was and what we were waiting for. I would find myself feeling imprisoned or become unaware of whole people in the room with us.

A reminder that I really needed this plan to work.

When I made it to the room where I would record the video, Vala, Jack and Teal'c chose to wait outside. I made my way in and sat in front of the camera, looking behind it at Sam, who smiled reassuringly at me.

"What the hell do I say?" I asked with a chuckle. "How can I explain this to him? Um…me?"

"You can't," Sam walked around the camera and sat on the table in front of me, her hand resting on mine. "You shouldn't. You want to be able to go back to mostly who you were before. You don't want to carry any of this with you. If you say too much…you could alter things. I mean, if you really wanted to that would be different. But this is all way too much for you to explain, and without a full context, how could you understand?"

I nodded, deciding to take her advice.

"Ok, let's get started," she said, running around the table and starting the camera. "Take your time Daniel."

Sitting in front of the camera, its lens staring back at me, was akin to looking down the barrel of a gun whose trigger I was about to pull. And that was what I was about to do, wasn't it? Relatively pull the trigger on the past two weeks. It was better than using a real gun. I could barely admit to myself that I had previously considered that option.

My throat was dry. I took a sip from the glass of water that had been placed in front of me by Sam. I took a deep breath and let it out. Finally, I spoke, even as all of the possible things I could say spun out of control within me. I could hear the insanity permeating my voice, my mannerisms, the order of my words. There was no way for me to control it.

"If you are listening to this now, you should know that you did this to yourself. It was all your idea. Well, other people thought about it and gave you options, but you chose it. All on your own. So believe them. It's true. Believe me, you wouldn't want what they're pulling out anyway. It's too much. Too much all at once. No air. No breaks. Just a million and one different this ways and thats curling around in my head until I couldn't breathe anymore.

"If you haven't figured it out by this point, I believe I am quite literally insane. There is nothing to hold onto anymore. Every possibility, every choice I had ever made, even choices I hadn't, led to an entirely different life until I could no longer tell reality from its alternates. Who am I really? I guess you tell me. You would know better.

"Not like you ever know better about anything. You push and you argue and you don't see what's of value in your life. But I do. How could I not? I've lost everything and regained it. I can't unsee what I have seen. But maybe you can. Just don't lose sight of what's important to you. You see subterfuge where there is none and undervalue the feelings of everyone around you. You shouldn't. Everything you were thinking was wrong. Besides, what can distance do except bring guilt when there is nothing you can do?"

Sam's carefully measured, kind but worried voice cut me off. "Ok, Daniel. That's enough. I think we've got what we need. Possibly a little more than we wanted. Do you want to lie down for a second? Dr. Lam can give you something to help you sleep."

God yes. Sleep would quiet down the riot in my head. "Please Sam," I begged, "please shut it off."

She promised me that she would.

"Clean bill of health, aside from the effects of the continued lack of sleep," Dr. Lam explained, waving the syringe in front of me that held the beginning of the end of this madness. "But this, should help that problem."

I looked around at everybody waiting around my hospital bed. SG-1, past and present and General Landry waited there for me. I realized what I needed to say…what was important, for the first time in a long time. "Thank you guys, for everything you've done for me these past two weeks. For taking care of me. You're my family. I love each and every one of you."

"And you're ours," Sam nodded. The rest of the group smiled reassuringly. Did they know? Was it possible that they could know how scared I was? I was trying very hard not to show it.

Vala and Jack were the closest to me, lined up on the other side of my bed from Dr. Lam.

"Vala?" I croaked out, the fear making my voice shake. I reached out and took her hand in mine. "What about us?"

She leaned over, pressing a kiss to my forehead, gently. "We'll find our way back."

"That's funny," I smiled through the tears forming in my eyes again. "I said the very same thing to you when we were setting time back on the Odyssey. "

"You were right," Vala grinned.

"Promise me you will be this time," I begged. "Don't let me be a jackass for much longer."

She pressed a sweet kiss to my lips, whispering against them. "I promise."

I nodded, looking to Dr. Lam. "I'm ready."

She leaned over and injected the fluid from the syringe into my waiting IV. I felt a warm rush pass through my arm, and immediately started feeling odd.

Suddenly struck with a memory, my hand shot out, grabbing onto Jack's forearm. "Don't let me leave."

"Leave? What?" Jack asked confused.

"My journal…you can't let me leave," I tried to explain, but my lips had started to feel numb and I couldn't make the proper words form.

I could almost make out Jack turning towards Vala for an explanation before my eyes began to close of their own accord. As I drifted, I realized that when I woke up, this nightmare would be over.


	10. Third Time's the Charm

At first, when my eyes fluttered open, I did not know where I was. I felt like it had just been moments ago when I had collapsed in front of the artifact on P3X-495 but even with my eyes only partially open I could tell this was the SGC Infirmary. I had been there enough times that I could have recognized it if I was blind. Which, at the moment, I partially was.

"Glasses," I rasped, and several figures, all of whom had been standing around me chatting it up with each other, turned to face me.

"Sunshine!" Mitchell cheered. "You're awake!"

The fuzzy blob with the long dark hair that must have been Vala rushed to my side and slid my glasses onto my face, careful to place them properly on the bridge on my nose and tuck the curve of each arm behind my ears. When her face became clear, I could see that she was tired. Just from looking at her I could tell something was wrong. She looked thinner. Her eyes were red-rimmed and sunken in. A little bit of that famous sparkle was missing from her eyes.

"Are you alright?" She asked, reaching behind me and fixing my pillows, straightening my sheets and asking me, "are you cold?" Then she gently pushed my hair out of my eyes. The look in her eyes was beginning to worry me. She was just being a drama queen. I felt fine.

I caught her hand as it slid down the side of my face. "I'm fine! Would you quit worrying over me and tell me what happened?"

The reaction had been a standard reaction for the two of us, but she didn't react with witty banter. She looked startled and she jumped back, removing her hands from me as her eyes dropped to the floor.

Why wasn't she just brushing this off? Why did she seem so upset? Looking up for an explanation I was shocked to find Jack and Sam amongst the group watching over me.

"Daniel, you don't have to be so mean," Jack remarked, his eyebrows knitted together as he shot a glance over to Vala who had slowly made her way to the corner of the room and perched on a stool.

I followed his eyes to Vala and realized I was being a bit harsh. "I'm sorry Vala," I frowned. "I'm just a little…confused."

"It's fine darling," she answered quickly, flashing a brilliant smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Don't worry about it. You have a lot of catching up to do."

"Catching up?" I parroted, looking around the room and taking note of the tension held in the bodies of all of my friends, noticing how exhausted they all looked, like they hadn't slept in weeks. "How long was I out? The last thing I remember I was zapped by an Alteran device."

"It isn't so much how long you were out," Sam frowned. "It's more how much don't you remember." She moved her hand towards a device, a sheepish look on her face, and tapped it with her hand.

I recognized that device and it only took a few moments to process what had happened. "You erased my memory? What? How long?"

"The Ancient device affected you negatively DanielJackson," Teal'c explained calmly. "It became necessary to erase two weeks of your memories for the sake of your own sanity."

Well, leave it to Teal'c to boil things right down to their simplest and most imperative form.

"I was crazy?" I asked.

"Well, that wasn't the new part," Vala answered dryly from her seat, but the joke had an emotionless quality, like she was speaking from a script, like it was her role to insult me, but she really relished no part of it. "The new part was the fact that you were seeing, hearing and experiencing variations of our timeline as though it was your own."

I stared at her blankly, torn between figuring out what was wrong with her and what the hell she had just said about me.

Sam elaborated on the problem. "You were experiencing multitudes of alternate realities. It was like a Quantum Mirror in your head. You were living through many different timelines as though you were in them. We've been operating on little or no sleep since trying to figure out a way to stop it before…"

"Before you ended up like one of those bodies hanging in the temple back there," Mitchell interjected. "You were well on your way to stark raving loony toons and if it hadn't been for Vala's quick thinking you would be one of those bodies. So try not to tear her down too quickly, Jackson."

Apparently Mitchell hadn't approved of my earlier outburst. I was shocked at the spike of jealousy that rushed through me at his protective behavior towards her. I was also shocked by the pride that surged through me with knowing she had been a part of the solution. I would have expressed that shock had I not still been getting over what he had just said.

"I almost killed myself?" I asked, eyes widening.

"It's good to have you back Dannyboy," Jack shook his head warily. "We should probably just leave it at that."

"I don't really want to leave it at that!" I spat, annoyed. "What the hell happened here? I just lost two weeks of my memories and you want to tell me to just leave it at that?"

"If you don't believe what we're telling you, you recorded a video to explain it to yourself," Sam explained. "Just like the one Vala recorded the last time we used this device."

My anger was rising. I wasn't one to like being confused and this whole thing just fed into everything I had already been thinking about life at the SGC. This just needed to stop. I was getting really tired of waking up in an infirmary bed. Really tired.

I jumped to my feet, knowing for certain that I was being a brat, but I couldn't help it. I suddenly wanted out of this place more than I could handle. "No. No, I don't want to see any video. I don't want to see anything."

"Dr. Jackson," Dr. Lam stepped in. "This has been a very disorienting experience for you. Maybe you should just lay back down and take a minute to collect yourself."

"I don't need to lay down!" I yelled, yanking my arm away as she tried to reach for it and backing myself up to the wall beside the infirmary bed. "I don't need to calm down! I just want off of this damn base!"

"What? Daniel, you're being rash," Vala responded as though the statement was the most absurd thing in the world, as if she hadn't been expecting it. As though I hadn't just told her I was leaving…but I hadn't had I? Two weeks had passed by since then. Had I said something to make her believe I had changed my mind?

I rubbed my fingers through my hair roughly. Damn, this was confusing. Although, I imagined what Sam had just described had probably been a bit more confusing.

"I'm not being rash," I argued childishly, not sure what else to say, still trying to collect my thoughts. "I already told you I was leaving."

"It was an impulsive decision when you said it the first time," she countered.

"You say impulsive as if that's a bad thing," I shot back, knowing that I was grabbing on to the first reason to be angry and running with it, but I couldn't help the feelings of confusion and anxiety this situation brought up in me. So, I lashed out. " 'You don't always have to plan everything, Daniel!', 'Daniel, would you just have a little more fun?' Aren't you always trying to get me to act on impulse? Well here's an impulse for you! I do not want to wake up an infirmary one more damn time. I want the hell off of this planet, the hell out of this program and the hell away from you! All of you! I just can't do this anymore!"

As soon as I said it, I knew it was a mistake. Just me, getting carried away by my bad temper. Sometimes, I could be an unreasonable jerk, I knew it. But it didn't change the feeling. And the exhalation of breath I made as I walked over to my bed and collapsed back down onto it, all my features twisting into a sheepish, embarrassed glance, didn't change the stricken look on the faces staring back at me.

"Look, I'm sorry guys," I finally said after a few moments of deep breaths. "I've been doing this for twelve years. Jack, you've got a desk job now. Sam, at least you've got a change of scenery. Teal'c, you get to go and visit your family off-world. Cam, Vala – you haven't been doing this nearly as long as I have. I have two places I spend my time in. Here and my apartment, and my apartment has a layer of dust building up in it that's about three months thick, because what is the point? Everything I have is tied to this base. I'm not saying I'm leaving you, I just want to do something different. If an end of the world translation comes up, radio me. I'll be here. But Jack – please, make it happen and fast. I want to head up that archaeology dig. And I want it to be soon."

"Ok Daniel," Jack sighed, the wind clearly taken out of him. "Consider it done."

With that, Vala stormed out of the room shouting her obviously untrue hopes of my quick recovery behind her.

Oh God, there was a "Bon Voyage, Daniel" banner hung in the middle of the room. I could kill them.

It had been a surprise. Everyone had been helping me pack. Everyone but Vala and Mitchell. Vala, because for whatever reason, she refused to accept that I was leaving and Mitchell, apparently because he was doing this.

Jack and Teal'c had suggested we eat. Sam had said she needed to take care of something else first but after a quick call to Mitchell, we all agreed to meet up at the rib place by his house, the one we had taken Vala to when she had first joined the team.

Ends up, it had all been a plan. Although clearly not a well thought out one. Sam was nowhere to be found.

It had been a week since I had woken up in that infirmary bed and I still only understood snippets of what had happened to put me there. People were being very dodgy on the topic. What I did know was that I had been driven insane by living a million different lives and had nearly killed myself in the armory, and – as everyone kept pointing out incessantly – Vala had saved my life with a perfect, ingenious plan to erase my memories to make it like it had never happened.

She was certainly right. It had never happened. Not as far as I was concerned. I was my same old, only slightly neurotic and emotionally unstable self. Which was more than I could say for Vala.

She hadn't really spoken to me since that day in the infirmary. I had come by her quarters to apologize, she had very politely accepted my apology and shooed me away. Since then, everyone seemed to have seen her but me.

There was a black hole in my office where she used to be.

Her laughter, smiles, constant chatter were all gone. She didn't even look like a person who would laugh, smile and chatter anymore. She looked beaten down. So tired.

It felt wrong packing up my office without her.

"Guys, you didn't have to do this," I told them, a tiny crooked smile crossing my features as they ushered me off to the table the banner hung over. "Especially since I know you don't want me going anywhere."

"Well, it's a small goodbye team dinner," Mitchell explained, pushing me into the seat at the head of the table. "Nothin' fancy."

They stared at the table, carefully choosing their seats as I looked on, wondering what they were planning. Jack sat to the left of me. Mitchell sat in the booth, didn't slide down towards me, but rather left space. Teal'c settled at the foot of the table.

I got it. They were leaving space for Sam and…

"We missed the surprise!" A pout came from the entrance we had just walked through and it was a voice like beautiful wind chimes to my ears. I couldn't help how damn good it was to hear her voice, nor could I help the fact that the first genuine smile to have crossed my face since I'd decided to leave made it's way to the surface as I turned to watch her walk in.

She looked just as enchanting as always. Her long curly hair cascading over her shoulders in ebony waves, her steel grey eyes alight with the first genuine smile I had seen on her since waking up in that infirmary which actually seemed to be aimed at me. She was dressed comfortably in a black collared shirt with jeans and black boots, and she still looked like a goddess.

My heart raced in my chest, despite every single admonishment I had issued myself about her intentions, about her inability to be serious, and it tripped up a few notches when I realized that Mitchell had been saving the other seat next to me for her.

As she slid into the seat beside me, my eyes searched out Sam's, who had trailed through the door behind Vala modestly, as though she knew that Vala's arrival would be the main event in my mind. When she looked to me, I mouthed my thank you to her for somehow managing to get this stubborn girl to come here and seem happy to do it.

Sam only smiled and shook her head in return. I was well aware that she thought I was crazy and stupid, but I wasn't sure if she felt that way because I felt the way that I had grown to feel for Vala or because I refused to act on it.

Apparently, my feelings for the crazy space pirate were clear to everybody. But nobody would talk about it, just like nobody ever nudged Sam and Jack together. It wasn't anyone's place.

I turned to Vala when she finally settled into her seat and covered her hand with my own, squeezing just slightly. The look on her face when she glanced up at me couldn't be categorized as anything other than pure surprise. "Thank you for coming. I didn't want to leave things on a bad note with you."

Vala smiled, but it was a much more subdued one this time. "I never intended to let you leave that way."

"Good," I nodded and then turned to the rest of the group. "Let's eat! I'm starving."

The next twenty minutes or so was spent ogling the menus with hungry, tired eyes and eventually placing an order. As we waited for food to be brought our way, the gang started in on me, telling every story they could think of that showed anything about me, from my brains, to my guts, and of course, not bothering to omit my brief moments of stupidity.

The stories didn't stop when our food came back and they definitely grew more outlandish when one round of beers became two and three. I didn't drink too much. My tolerance for beer had not grown at all and I didn't need to be drunk when I started my new job in the morning.

A story about the Kor'mak bracelets and my annoyance with Vala during that time had everybody roaring with laughter, even Vala, who had spent much of the time only tentatively chuckling.

"Don't think he's still that annoyed with you Princess," Mitchell laughed. "Never make that mistake. Back then, he couldn't wait for you to go away and then, when you were taken by Athena, that boy couldn't eat, sleep, or think until you came back home."

My eyes dropped to the table. Damn Mitchell and his beer soaked inability to keep his mouth shut.

"Really?" Vala leaned all her weight on my shoulder, gazing up at me with wide innocent eyes. I couldn't help but meet them with my own. "You were that worried about me?" She batted her eyes.

"Oh, shush you!" I bumped her with my shoulder, holding my finger to my lips. She bumped back and flashed a huge smile at me. I couldn't keep eye contact for too long. If I did I thought I might change my mind altogether.

I almost wished I could have done this without them paying too much attention. I wasn't so sure I could do this if I had to look them in the eyes.

Mitchell took off on another, outlandish military tale then, as if he didn't just turn my emotions upside down. I leaned over towards Vala then, Mitchell's earlier words sparking a slight realization in me.

"Speaking of not eating," I whispered, motioning towards her very full plate. "What's up?"

"What?" She feigned ignorance. "I'm just not hungry."

"You are never not hungry. Never mind the fact that you haven't once picked at my food, which is a nearly habitual behavior for you. What's up?" I asked the question firmer this time, pinning her with my eyes.

She reached over into my plate, grabbed a french fry and popped it into her mouth defiantly, never once taking her eyes off of mine. "Better?"

"No," I answered impatiently. "Better would be you telling me why you're not eating."

"I'm fine."

"Yeah, that's what I say all the time, usually when I'm not."

"I'm horribly ill. Still leaving tomorrow?" She lied, petulantly.

I didn't answer, simply glared at her.

"Yes?" Vala asked. "Well, then 'I'm fine' will just have to be enough. Now pay attention to Mitchell's yammering! You're being rude."

I very nearly growled in return before turning my attention back to the rest of the group who were now laughing loudly at some joke I'd missed.

Three hours and a decent amount of beers later, the waitress had been paid and received a very healthy tip. The group had taken turns going around the table and listing all the things they would miss about me. For Jack, he had said he would miss bickering with me and torturing me incessantly. For Sam, it was missing someone to talk to who was just as interesting in the "boring details" as she was. Teal'c said he would miss our occasional kel'no'reem sessions and my ability to be unheard when it was necessary and to refuse to be unheard when that was the best course. Mitchell said he would miss his basketball partner. And Vala, well Vala laughed it off and told me she would miss our constant arguing.

Teal'c, who had never really developed a fondness for drinks of any kind, took driving duty and we all piled into Jack's car. When we returned to the base we split up with the promise that they would meet up tomorrow to see me off. Jack and I had made it back to my office and were packing up the very last of my things in silence when he let out a sudden interested hum.

"Hmmm what?" I asked, looking up only to find him innocently placing something into a box, but I suspected from his quick movement that he was hiding something.

"Oh, nothing."

I didn't believe him and that was with good reason. When the last of the boxes had been packed, the two of us had almost completely sobered up, and I found myself saying a bittersweet goodbye to the room that had been my safe haven for the last eleven years, Jack showed me that he had been lying.

"Oh, sad now are we?" He asked with little sympathy.

"I never said it was an easy choice," I answered, sighing with the weight of all of these goodbyes. "I just said it was the right one."

"You've mentioned that," Jack nodded, condescendingly before roughly shoving a book against my chest. I looked down to find my journal pressed there. "Read the last entry here. Tell me how you feel when you're done."

I took the book from his hands without a word, trying to remember what my last entry had been. Hadn't it been something about the bug people of P5X-429? It certainly hadn't been anything important.

"Good night Daniel," Jack smiled. "See you in the morning."

He turned down the hall and left, leaving me alone with the journal as I stood against the hallway wall beside my office door. I opened it to the page Jack had bookmarked and found a date from a little over a week ago. My interest was immediately piqued. This was from the time I didn't remember.

To SG-1 Past and Present:

I am not confused right now. I am of a clear and lucid state of mind. Given my recent state, I feel it is necessary for me to make that perfectly clear. I am not in a vision. As a matter of fact, I have just had one, embarrassed myself, and demanded that I leave for a little alone time. Yes, Vala, I know you didn't agree. Thank you, Jack, for granting me this one mercy.

I have come to realize how this will end. Though progress is being made toward a conclusion, it doesn't seem to be happening fast enough, and I fear that the solution to the problem will not come until I have to take a definitive action to end it before I hurt others due to my mental deficiency. I won't allow myself to do that.

So I'm using this avenue to say my goodbyes.

It's funny. Before this whole thing started, I was certain I wanted to leave this place as fast as I could. My reasoning was childish. Jack, Sam, Teal'c and even Cam had other places to go to escape this mess. And I was tied to the SGC. The only thing that relieved that even remotely, was the one thing I truly believed I couldn't have. Vala. But we'll get to you later, Val.

It became clear that there was no way I was reading this propped against a wall. I took off down the hallway, headed for my quarters, my eyes never leaving the page.

Now the idea of leaving pains me. You have always been my family while I sat there personally bemoaning my absence of one, as though you all weren't sitting beside me.

It took me getting sick to see it. Watching you all rush to help me, not sleeping, not eating, dealing with the emotional abuse of the visions I was living out, because I know that wasn't easy for any of you, I find that what I used to find an annoying invasion of privacy that could only earn the response 'I'm fine' was a welcome saving grace, a life preserver when I was about to drown.

There are things you all need to know before I go.

Mitchell. Cameron. You are like my kid brother. You screw up sometimes, but it's only because you're so new at this, and though your odd sense of hero worship occasionally disturbs me, it's only because I know you would do absolutely anything for each and everyone of us. You have provided a source of understanding and wonder that is singular to you, and I thank you for always trying to remind me that what we have been doing for years is an amazing pursuit that very few people on this planet will ever get the opportunity to enjoy. Thank you for reminding me that I am one of those lucky few. I know it doesn't seem like I feel very lucky right now. But I do. To have had the opportunity to work with you and all of the rest. If there's anything the visions have taught me, it's that things could have been horrible for all of us, and we have been blessed by the relative lightness of our situation.

Sam. All at once my twin sister and the mother hen. Quick to care for me and quick to commiserate. You have always been the only other person in our team who wanted to know the how and why and not just the what and the how to kill it/stop it. We were siblings in the pursuit of knowledge and it meant so much to me to have another scientist on my team. I hope I always gave you the opportunity to be a little un-military. It meant even more to have a friend, a person who understood my frustrations and always made herself available to me if I needed any help at all, be it to get me a cup of coffee or to shock me into understanding I really was addicted to a sarcophagus. Shit….that really does some up our lives doesn't it? Ha!

I had made it to my room, trying to ignore the way my heart was slamming in my chest, the way my eyes were tearing up while reading these last words of a frantic me, a suicidal self. I mindlessly opened my door with my key card and headed into my quarters, simply wanting to curl up in bed so I didn't, couldn't change my mind. But I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page, so even as I stripped to a t-shirt and boxers, I just kept on reading.

Teal'c. You are like my older brother – always providing wisdom to me even if I can't always see things the way you do. You are fiercely protective and more intelligent than anyone outside of the team has ever given you credit for. I know I've never said it before, but despite the loss I suffered as a result, I want to thank you for your quick thinking in protecting me from Amonet. I know that has always stood between us, at least a little, and I do not want you to think that I still hold this against you. I do not.

Jack. You are like an older brother to me as well and while everyone I've listed are my dearest friends, you and I have always shared a special bond. You are absolutely my best friend. And yes Jack, you, as much as I tease you for behaving like a child, are like an older brother. You use your humor to provide me with a much needed dose of reality, you always protect me when I need it and I honestly don't know where I would be without you. Thank you for always providing me a calming presence when I was falling apart and a laugh when I thought I was incapable.

Vala.

"I'm coming with you," her voice rang out in the silence of the room, effectively causing me to jump right out of my skin.

I looked up at her, shocked by her presence and suddenly quite intensely aware of how few clothes I was wearing. "W-what?" was all I could manage.

"I said I'm coming with you," she elaborated, slinking towards me. I tried not to pay any attention.

"What are you talking about? And what are you doing in here?" Both very good questions.

"Wait, this isn't my room?" She winked.

I glared at her.

"I already told you why I'm here," she changed tacks. "I'm here to inform you that I will be accompanying you on this new adventure of yours. My bags are already packed." She motioned to the corner of my room she had been hiding in, where four huge suitcases were stacked.

"What? Why?" I asked. Didn't she know that she was one of the very big reasons I was leaving? What did she expect to accomplish by trailing along with me. "You say that now, but you know you will just be bored and make it your mission to drive me insane, and that's not exactly what I'm looking for on this trip. I'm sorry, but no. You're not coming with me."

"I'm not?" She asked again.

"You're not," I answered, looking back down at the journal in my hands.

"Would you stop reading that for long enough to actually hear what I am saying to you?"

"I hear what you're saying to me. The answer is, 'you're not'."

"Okay then," she nodded, took a deep breath and then began to walk towards me. "I want you to know that I will not be coming to see you off in the morning. So, I'm just going to give you a quick hug goodbye and be on my way. I'll come and visit you sometime."

The closer she got the clearer the glimmer of tears in her eyes got and the more she spoke, the more her voice shook. I suddenly remembered the conversation we'd had before I had touched that damned device. The one where she had asked me not to go. And I remembered the look in her eyes that I had tried desperately not to acknowledge.

I reached out and laid my hands atop her shoulders, effectively holding her at arms length while simultaneously attempting comfort. I did not want her hugging me right now.

"Vala, what's going on with you?" I asked. "Does this have anything to do with why you weren't eating anything earlier?"

She looked down at the floor and then back up at me, her eyes holding a vulnerable sparkle, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She nodded.

"Okay," I said softly, steering her to sit on the edge of the bed. I tossed the journal onto my nightstand before kneeling in front of her, looking up at her face attentively. "Tell me. What's wrong?"

She nodded and then took a moment, her hands rubbing away some unnoticed chill from her arms as she began to speak. "I lost somebody I love very much in the time you don't remember."

I examined her face, not entirely sure I had understood her properly. "What? Who? We received an offworld communication? Jacek? T-t-tomin?" Now why did I stutter on that one?

She shook her head, once again looking at me like there was some sort of universal truth in her world that I would never understand. It wasn't a nasty look. It was more the look you give to a child who has no idea what he has just said.

"No, none of those," she shook her head.

"Then who?"

"Daniel, this person was the love of my life. The one person that makes my life whole. And he is gone now and I don't know how to get him back," she explained, without ever really explaining. Her voice cracked as she spoke.

I shrugged to illustrate my confusion at her statement. Was she talking about her fiancé from back in her days before Quetesh?

She pinned me with a look that was nearing venomous the longer I withheld a response. The love of her life? She couldn't possibly mean…

"You can't guess at what I'm talking about? Forget it Daniel, I'm leaving." She jumped up from the edge of the bed and began to march out.

"Fine! I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't want to do anything to hurt you here, but I'm trying to help and you won't talk to me without playing games!" I imagined that my anger may have been fueled by her discussion of some unknown love she'd had. Maybe.

"I'm not playing games!" She growled. "I was never playing games. Maybe someday you will actually get that! I mean really Daniel, how can someone so smart be so damn stupid?"

"You know what? Get out!" I shouted back, frustrated at being treated like I was a fool for not being able to crack her code. "I'm so glad that we get to end this the way it began – with a fight! I mean aren't you capable of a normal conversation? Don't even worry about visiting me. Maybe it's better if we just leave things as they are. It can be a perfectly symmetrical relationship this way."

She stood there for a moment, seething with anger, her hands balled into fists at her sides, her eyes locked in a battle between anger and sadness. "Fine," she finally said, turning and leaving the room just in time for my heart to drop all the way into my stomach.

She was just out the door before she whirled around and marched back in. Oh thank God. That was not the way I wanted to end things. Not really.

"Not fine," she said, plopping back down on the edge of the bed. "You're not chasing me away that easily, Space Ape!"

That was what was so completely wrong and so completely perfect about our relationship. One minute I wanted to kill her, the next I was laughing uncontrollably. It was a shame she didn't know how to be serious. We could be perfect together. We really could.

"You mean Space Monkey," I wheezed, wiping at my eyes. "Not Space Ape. You really need to stop hanging around with Jack." I knelt back down in front of her.

"Well you're acting a lot more like an ape than a monkey," she stated matter of factly.

"So, still angry at me then?" I asked.

"Yes! I know what you think," she answered, her volume rising with almost every word, her words coming more and more desperate. "You think I'm playing with you. You think I'm going to use you and then throw you away and it scares you. You think that if you ever showed me you had feelings for me I would laugh at you. But I know you do. I know you care about me. And do you want to know how I know?"

With every word she spoke, my heart tripped up a little faster, my eyes grew a little wider. Was it just that she knew me so well that she instinctively understood? I was too caught up in my own thoughts to try to answer her question.

"I know because you told me. You told me," she said, her voice still anxious and her words running together at top speed. "You are the person I was talking about. You are the person I lost. And I haven't been able to eat since the breakfast where you made that little announcement before you got sick, because you scared the life out of me with the idea that you were leaving. And I know I wasn't supposed to tell you anything about the two weeks that passed, but I have to because I promised you I wouldn't let you leave." Tears started streaming down her face now, as her argument came to a close. "I promised you I would help us find our way back to each other and then you woke up and you were…mean to me…and I thought I didn't have a chance and maybe it was all the visions that made you love me. But I'm running out of time, so I have to try everything I can which means I have to break the rule and tell you that you loved me in those two weeks. And in those two weeks, you knew that I loved you. You knew it. No question. And I do. Love. You. So like I said, I'm coming with you. Or you can stay here. But either way, I'm not letting you out of my sight unless you can tell me that you don't care about me right now."

For a moment, all I could do was stare and process what she was saying. She loved me. I had told her I loved her. We had been together in the time I couldn't remember. She was crying because of me.

I'm not even sure when I decided to kiss her. It must have been in that moment where I realized that everything I had been running away from was wrong. Unbelievably wrong.

I surged up from where I was kneeling before her, grabbed her face in my hands and kissed her, our lips crashing together with the force of the years that I had been holding back my feelings for her. I pulled her to her feet as I moved to mine, my lips never leaving hers. My hands were in her hair, running over her arms, her hips, her back, until the need for air proved too much and I pulled back, ending the kiss.

Struggling to catch my breath, I pulled her into my arms. My heart racing, my brain still struggling to catch up on everything that now made perfect sense to me, things I had never wanted to accept, like how she only remembered her life after the Athena incident when she saw me, after spending so much time with Mitchell, or how hard she fought my use of the ancient device to learn how to build the Sangraal, how broken she was when I had woken up this time and how broken I had been when I had been a Prior and she hadn't wholeheartedly believed in me.

It was all because we were in love. Beneath the teasing, beneath the ribbing, beneath the arguments and the self-defense. We were in love.

"I love you," I whispered breathlessly against her lips before kissing her again, deeper this time, pulling her against me, only to be pulled onto the bed with a force that made me realize she was always much stronger than she seemed.

Wow.

That was all the thought my brain could form at the moment.

And I had been laying here for a half an hour trying to figure out what I would do now. But 'wow' was all I could come up with.

We had made love. Crazy, passionate, emotional love. We were lying, sated and spent in each other's arms, our legs entwined. Vala was dreamily drawing little circles with her fingers across my chest and I was drawing the Ancient alphabet on her back, absently.

I waited for her breathing to even out and when I was sure she had fallen asleep I reached over to my nightstand and picked up the journal again.

Vala. I hadn't had the opportunity to tell you this at the time, but I wasn't upset when I had found out we had spent our time on the Odyssey together, in a relationship for fifty years. I was relieved. Because it cleared so many things up inside. It forced me to understand that as frightened as it may make me, you love me as much as I love you. I'm so sorry it had to be this way. I'm so sorry I have to hurt you. Any of you, but you Vala, most of all. But I honestly feel like I'm sparing you great pain protecting you from what I feel like I'm becoming. I just want you to know that every single alternate timeline in which we had the opportunity to meet the way we did here, ended the same way. With you and me - together.

In the end, it's all about family. And if Jack, Teal'c and Mitchell are my brothers, and Sam is my sister, then Vala, you would have to be my wife. I'm so sorry I will never have the opportunity to see that through. But take comfort in the idea that there are timelines where that exists. Where we got that chance.

I love you all. I'm sorry for this. Thank you. Thank you for all of your help, all of the time, but most importantly now.

Love always, even in death,

Daniel.

"Does that prove anything to you? Change your mind about anything?" Vala asked from her place lying on my chest.

"You know what this is?" I asked, incredulously.

"I knew it existed. I knew it must," she answered, burying her head into my side. "You don't attempt suicide without a note."

I swallowed hard. I took a deep breath and made my decision. In those two weeks I'd had the opportunity to travel many roads, to live many lives. And of all the paths I had been led on, only one really counted. It had been a theme of our journeys to alternate realities. The only one that could matter was our own. And so, it was irrelevant what happened anywhere else. I finally understood that of all the paths I could have traveled this was the only one I could worry about. This was the only important one. And the truth was, it was the only one I wanted.

"You know," I told Vala, "this is the third time you've kept me from leaving the planet, and the only time I've been grateful."

She pulled me close, burying her face in my neck and I could feel the tears falling from her eyes, even as she tried to hide them. Relieved tears.

I smiled. I would have a lot of unpacking to do in the morning. And I finally understood that I would have at least five grateful people helping me every step of the way.


End file.
